The Cactus Robotics Team is part of the FIRST Robotics Competition. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization dedicated to spreading technology and science in the community. Each year, it brings high school students and engineers together through a challenging competition to construct a robot in 6 weeks that must be able to compete in a game that changes every year. Students learn valuable engineering skills, teamwork, and gracious professionalism along the way. The robot build is organized to imitate a real life engineering situation as closely as possible.

There are over 1,500 teams, and over 37,000 high-school students involved. At this point in time there are 41 regional events that are going to occur during the month of March, involving teams from 8 different countries around the world. In April there is a national competition in Atlanta, Georgia where teams with the best community outreach and the best robots compete.

A few years ago FIRST expanded its mission to spread engineering by creating something called the FIRST Lego League. This new league includes 9-14 year old students who are given a real life situation to overcome. This year their game was to come up with methods to perform tasks in an underwater themed environment.

FIRST recognizes that the students of today are the basis upon which the future will be built. The competitions that are held across the world are part of the incentive for students to become a well rounded foundation of the upcoming years.

Today FIRST has reached over 156,000 students, 12,911 robots have been built, 44,000 mentors have been involved, and there has been 28,000 event volunteers.