Texas BEST

Texas BEST (Boosting Engineering Science and Technology), originally NT (North Texas) BEST, is an annual robotics competition similar to the FIRST Robotics Competition. BEST began in 1993 when Texas Instruments held the competition to determine which school it would sponsor in the 1994 FIRST Robotics Competition. Some older BEST content is included in the FRC Archive under the BEST tag.

1993

The 1993 NT BEST game was PVC Insanity. The contest was held by Texas Instruments' Sherman site and 13 schools from as far away as San Antonio competed. Robots had to fit inside a 24 inch cube and weigh no more than 28 pounds. In three minute matches teams aimed to collect their color of PVC ring from the perimeter of the field and score them on a central "cake" with seven posts. Any ring that ends the match on or over the cake but not inside a machine scores one point. Additional points are awarded for scoring the PVC rings on a post that matches the team's color, with the taller central pole being open to score for all teams.

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  The PVC Insanity logo [1]

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  Gunter High's 1993 NT BEST robot "Eightball." [2]

A presentation about the 1993 competition was given at the 1994 kickoff event.

1994

In 1994 the competition was called Bumble Rumble. The goal was to collect "bumble ball" dog toys and put them in goals on the side of the field. San Antonio BEST was also formed as the second "hub" of competition.

1995

The competition for 1995 was named "Totally Awesum." In this game each team had both a positive and negative scoring area. Teams collected long, foam "noodles" and placed them in their positive scoring area while trying to clear the noodles from the negative area.

In 1995 NT Best expanded to include a state-level competition which was called Texas Best. The top six teams from the NT Best competition were sent to compete with teams from four other "hubs." Approximately 85 teams competed overall.

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  Texas BEST logo [3]

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  Gunter High students show Jerry Junkins, Texas Instruments CEO and president, their winning 1995 BEST robot "Terminoodles." Gunter would be sponsored by Texas Instruments in 1996 to compete in FIRST as team -112 [4]