Higher Voltage

Late last summer I received an email from a lady whose name I was pretty familiar with but I didn’t “personally” know her.  She was one of the big wig names in the Washington science Fair arena’s and her family gave workshops on how to do a science project for the fair.  I had been to one and had concluded that she was one of “those women”.  The one who home schools her children in perfection and they are all amazingly brilliant and well behaved and graduate from The University of Washington at 17 with engineering degrees…. You must know what I mean…

Anyhow, the email stated that they were starting a FIRST robotics team and were looking for members. Now, I am not stupid and jumped at the chance to have Seri and Michael partake in the brilliance that surrounds this family. 

Seri loved every minute of it and Michael hung in there for about four months.  The reason why?  True to form, the group was intense!  Fried poor Mikes brain and he was smart enough to know when to jump ship. Seri on the other hand thrived on the intensity (surprising isn’t it?).

Now, most high schools posses a robotics team of sorts and some of them do REALLY well.  A first year, home schooled rookie team?  We were not expected to do well by those that did not know us.  See, for us there is at least one parent per child present and mentoring and half of these parents are extremely knowledgeable about the engineering field.  It wasn’t a place where it was seen as OK to drop of your kid and let a few adults coral them.  Also, the time they put in was really intense.  During build season they were working from 2:00- 9:30 six days a week and even had sleepovers so they wouldn’t have to stop working to do mundane stuff such as go home and sleep.  I knew this the moment I saw their name on the email and the team did not disappoint.

 

We attended our first competition with “Surge” (the robot) in Seattle and were placed in the top eight at the end of the qualifiers which meant we were in a position to be picked to be in an alliance with a top team or to choose our own alliance to go into the finals with.  We were seriously amazed to have made it into the finals at our first competition.  The team wasn’t part of the winning alliance, but they were granted a “Rookie Team” award which is a big deal and meant they had earned a spot at Nationals in St. Louis.

 

Hanging in “the pit” between rounds”.

We next went to Spokane for a competition and then the team and robot were headed off to Nationals.  When all was said and done here are the awards the team walked away with.

The robot in action.  Part of the set up was that you had to shoot balls into the hoops for points.  The team built an extended arm on the robot which reached right up to the hoop and then placed the balls into it.

Another object of the set up was balancing on a ramp in the middle of the field.  Here is our robot with another robot from our alliance after they have successfully balanced.

Another family that we are so glad to have let into our “village”.  This was the main mentor for the team and him and his family were truly amazing.  Seri learned a lot from them and is a better student and leader because of it.  Can’t say thank you enough.

Now that the intensity of the Robotics season is over I am grateful for the break but am also in some twisted way looking forward to the excitement of next year and watching my girl learn more than I could ever hope to alongside an amazing group of friends.