History

Team History

The Missoula Robotics Team was founded in 2009 as First Robotics Competition Team 3216 by a Hellgate high school teacher who wanted to provide new opportunities to their students.  Since then, our team has grown to encompass students from all three Missoula high schools (Big Sky, Hellgate, and Sentinel) as well as homeschool students.  

In 2024 we absorbed the long dormant First Tech Challenge team 16 and founded a new team, 23887, to allow even more opportunities for students to engage.  Additionally, during the same season, we moved into a new dedicated robotics center that now houses our entire organization - reducing our reliance on any one school.

We are the Missoula Robotics Team, FRC 3216, from Missoula, Montana. Our team was founded in 2009 by a local high school teacher. All members of the team in our rookie year were from Hellgate High School. Our team later expanded to include members from all three Missoula area public high schools (Sentinel, Hellgate, and Big Sky) and moved locations. 

The team was headquartered in the STEM center at Sentinel High School which underwent an extensive renovation including significant upgrades to the computer science center and the industrial arts center. The STEM center also includes designated classrooms for auto shop, bike shop, computer science, engineering, woodshop, metals shop, and welding.

In the 2023-24 season, we moved into our new Robotics Center at 215 S 6th St. W, the former Missoula County Public Schools administration building and print shop. 

We are the first FRC team in Montana, and we aspire to expand the impact of FIRST throughout our state. Our team’s mission is to spread awareness of FIRST and FRC throughout Montana and inspire other high schools to start their own teams. We have helped another FIRST team get started in Manhattan, Montana. We foster long lasting relationships and encourage the FIRST core values inside and outside of our team. In the past five years, we have organized our team, increased our membership, added to our sponsors list, and have been honored to win FIRST awards at each regional event that we have attended. 

See our Team Stats here.