About Our Team
Team #4398 the Gladiators from Traverse City, MI, have been competing in FIRST since 2012.
Team #4398 is a group of 9th-12th grade students who are united by their shared passion for robotics.
Despite our small size, our team is able to achieve great things through collaboration. Robotics not only teaches mechanical and business skills, but also valuable lessons in teamwork, decision-making, and creativity.
Competition for the sake not of destroying one another, but for the sake of bettering and improving both competitors as a result of the competition.
Our Robots
Spiritus: 2022-2023
Our 2023 robot’s name “Spiritus” is Latin for breath, soul, or life and refers to the hard work we put in to breathe new life into #4398. Because we were rebuilding our team during the 2023 season, we decided to build a simple but robust design that would attract attention for its consistency and reliability
Ex Animo: 2023-2024
Our robot’s name “Ex Animo” is Latin for from the heart and is inspired from Colossians 3:23, a verse in the bible that encourages enthusiasm and dedication, no matter the task you are working on. We put effort into prototyping to find solutions we could make and iterations that wouldn’t work, improving CAD skills, and manufacturing some of our ideas. We continued our pursuit of build quality and continuous improvement.
Conor: 2024-2025
Our team name this year, “Conor”, reflects how much our team has grown in the past year, through our size and talents! The name Conor derives from the Latin word for “may you try”. This was a big theme this year with all our new members, pushing them to experiment with new things. The rookies put effort into learning new programming and control system skills. We have also upped our documentation processes, focusing more on explaining the team processes to new members for the future! Our team has also improved our scouting this year, with a new team communication app and scouting papers.
