TechHOUNDS members will meet on Sept. 30 after school in Room C105 to prepare for the upcoming build season, which will take place six weeks after winter break. The team members are aiming to win their third consecutive Purdue Boilermaker Regional. Club sponsor George Giltner said even though the team has many new members, he thinks that the team is capable of winning the Regional for the third time.

“I think it’s a lot of pressure to win three in a row, but considering our two consecutive wins, I think we have what it takes,” Giltner said. “What I’m excited about is to just get started. We have a whole new recruit team, but that’s just how sports and clubs work.”

Junior Ateev Gupta, a three-year TechHOUNDS veteran, said that he is personally optimistic about how the team will perform at the Regional this year.

“We have a good chance of winning,” Gupta said. “I think as the year goes on, we’ll become faster and better than what we were doing before.”

Most of the meetings, Giltner said, consist of the members breaking up and working in various divisions, including Robot Operations, Construction and Animation. Although the meetings are supervised and guided by the sponsor and mentors, according to Giltner, a large part of meetings is led by the students.

“We are a student-led team. Ninety percent of what the team does is led by the students, not the mentors or teachers,” Giltner said. “That’s essentially what TechHOUNDS is about. It’s about taking a student and preparing them for the real world.” By David Choe <[email protected]>