About Us


About Us

Our Team

We are team 7842 Browncoats and this is our eleventh year competing as a FIRST Tech Challenge team. The Browncoats are a community-based FIRST Tech Challenge competition robotics team made up of students from an approximate 500 square mile area of North Alabama. Currently, the team is made up of sixteen students ranging from 7th to 12th grade. Between them, these students represent public, private, and home schools from the North Alabama area. Every year is a learning experience for us, and we love applying what we learn to our next season. As a team, we aim to embody the core values of FIRST and expand the program in our community and throughout the country. Through our outreach events, we hope to inspire others to start their own team or volunteer at FIRST events.

The Browncoats evolved from the FIRST Tech Challenge team, 12-Volt Ninjas, who formed in 2011. In 2013, they brought up members from the FIRST Lego League team, Acronym, and renamed the team Browncoats. The Browncoats’ name comes from the television series, Firefly. Firefly was an American space western science fiction series which aired in 2002. Although the show only lasted one season, fans worldwide call themselves Browncoats. Stay Shiny!

Our Season

Our team is incredibly excited to be competing in our eleventh season, the 2023-2024 FIRST Tech Challenge CenterStage Season. Be sure to follow our progress on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube for regular season updates. 

Track Our Progress!

If you would like to keep track of our team’s competitions and results, visit our Orange Alliance page: https://theorangealliance.org/teams/7842

After each competition, the results will generally be posted soon after. You can also follow all of our social media, where we post about our journey!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FTC7842browncoats/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ftcbc7842

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ftcbrowncoats/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3FZjdv4BWaNA7gnVq2ytAQ

Our Goals

Team FTC 7842 Browncoats’ mission is to spread awareness and recognition of FIRST robotics and STEM throughout our community, while also teaching students important life skills such as team work, communication, cooperation, experimentation, public speaking, building, programming, technical writing, marketing, fundraising, and more. Not only do we plan to introduce FIRST to as many people as we can, but we also plan to get them involved with the program through our efforts.

Join Our Team!

If you would like to apply to join our team, please fill out this application: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MK6BYWB  Once you’ve done that, someone from our team will contact you to come join us at one of our meetings to meet the team!