I founded a private Vex team with my friends in middle school, and though we had absolutely no clue what we were doing we somehow managed to bug local coaches enough to get some good advice and figure out a vauge direction to go in. We had no funding and could not afford to pay for a full field, and so rather than forgo an autonomous routine, I wrote code for what I called "replay autonomous," which allowed us to record an autonomous routine using manual driver control on the practice field the day of the competition, then "replay" it without driver input during the competition. Sadly, our team disbanded because we all ended up in different places for high school, but that year is still one of my fondest memories.