Iron Claw Robotics, Team 972, Neighbor

Iron Claw is an First Robotics Competition (FRC) team run by the Los Gatos High School Robotics Club. This year we are restarting our FRC team at LGHS. We look forward to seeing our fellow teams at the Silicon Valley Regional in April 2016!

Team 972 was founded as “Steel Paw” in 2002. You can see a video of their rookie year robot at the Silicon Valley Regional here. 972’s name later changed to “Iron Paw”. Unfortunately, team 972 stopped competing in 2008 due to a lack of interest and the retirement of the lead mentor. Students traveled to Pioneer High School’s team 668, the Apes of Wrath to continue participating in robotics.

Soon, enough interest built up for the Robotics Club to reform at LGHS. We participated as team 6730 in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) in 2012. FTC is a smaller-scale and lower-cost robotics competition. In fall of 2014, the program grew enough for LGHS to field a second FTC team, 9097. At the end of the 2015 FRC season, the Los Gatos High School Robotics Club decided to split off from Pioneer High School and the Apes of Wrath due to fast-increasing interest in robotics and our team’s growing size.

We are now restarting team 972 as “Iron Claw”. Our mission is to develop and nurture interest in STEM within the Los Gatos community and to teach our members real-life STEM skills, teamwork, and gracious professionalism.