Way to Go! Part 2

Sioux Center High School’s FIRSTTech Challenge Robotics Team, Aluminerdy, competed at the NW Iowa League Championship in Sioux City, Iowa January 31 on the campus of WIT Community College.

The field of competitors consisted of twenty teams from across northwest Iowa.  The top five teams from this competition advance to the FIRSTTech Challenge-Iowa Championship to be held March 6 & 7 at the Marriott Hotel in Coralville.  Qualifying Teams were” Marsupial Tech”, a 4-H team from Sgt. Bluff,” BZ Club” from Trinity Christian in Hull, Sioux Center’s” Aluminerdy”, Esterville-Lincoln Central “Midgets” and Sioux City West “The 50FIRST”.

Teams not only compete with their robots.  They also compete for other awards based on their judging interview and engineering notebook.  Sioux Center, in addition to qualifying for state, also won the PTC Design Award. The intent of the PTC Design Award is to expand the challenge, inspiring Teams to incorporate industrial design into their robots. These elements can be shown in the simplicity of the design as it applies to the tasks, the look and feel of the robot, and how the design allows us to think of robots in new ways. The Design aspect must serve a function – but they should also differentiate the robot in a unique fashion – not an easy task with a limited set of parts and game challenge.

Sioux Center was also a 3rd place finalist for the Inspire Award. The highly sought-after Inspire Award is given to the Team that the Judges felt truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program.  This Team serves as an inspiration to what this program, and the young minds involved, can accomplish. The Team that receives this Award has performed well in all Judging categories and was chosen by the Judges as a model FIRSTTech Challenge Team. The Judges use Match performance, observations made during interviews and in the pit area, the Team’s Engineering Notebook, and performance on the playing field in determining the winner.

The tentative agenda for the state event is as follows:

Friday, March 6: teams check in between 11am-3pm. Inspections and judging occur on Friday.

Saturday, March 7: opening ceremony, qualification matches and closing ceremony.

Members of the Team:

Jayden Vermeer

Anton Vonk

Cole Peterson

Jordan Nomansen

Graham Zomermaand

Matt Bruxvoordt

Keaton DeJong

Eric Keizer

Blake Boone

Emma Rathbun

Payton VanBeek

Jacob Schrader

Josh Rathbun

Sam DeJong

Our Business Sponsors are:

Interstates

Engineering Design Associates, Inc.

Premier Communications

Link Mfg.