Click on the thumbnails below for records of teams who attended River Rage each year.

The History of River Rage

The first efforts to unite the FIRST Programs at the Manchester High Schools began in the Fall of 1996. At the time, there was a prominent event held in the Arms Park Parking lot called River Fest. Every year on the weekend after Labor Day, throngs of people from around New England came to the Manchester event that combined concerts, carnival rides, crafts and food. Manchester Central and West demonstrated their 1996 robots and promoted FIRST with videos and handouts. One little tent held everything.

At River Fest in 1997, with support from PSNH, Central, Memorial and West got together and decided to put on a post season competition that was modeled after the only other post season event, Rumble at the Rock which first took place in the summer of 1996. A FIRST octahedral shaped field was set up Friday night outside of the pit tent in the paved parking lot. At that time, three teams competed at once and all competed against each other. Six teams attended the event with robots. Representatives from a number of others came to observe the event.

Starting in 1998, the field was erected under a big tent. Trinity High School joined the planning and competed along with 11 other teams. The competition continued to take place on Saturday while some teams remained on Sunday to demonstrate their robots to the River Fest attendees and sell snacks in order to pay for the rental of the tent.

In the year 2000, FIRST expanded the size and shape of the field which made it similar to the present day field. Due to the size and unpredictable weather, it was decided to move the event “indoors”. West High was selected to give the River Rage the “feel” that FIRST events had in their earlier days. Sixteen teams competed that year.

In 2005, the River Rage Committee decided to move the date of the event to the end of October. It had been difficult to sign up and confirm teams during the summer so the new date was selected. The site selected was Manchester Memorial High School, home of the first (1992) and third (1995) FRC competitions. 23 teams participated that year. After that, with the exception of one year, River Rage has remained at Manchester West High School.