PORT TOWNSEND — Any idea that team sports are at cross purposes with academics is shattered by the Port Townsend robotics team, which is scrambling now for funds to compete for a world championship.
The team, dubbed the Roboctopi, has earned its success through scientific knowledge and problem solving to complement the need for strong arms and fast decisions.
“It’s not a team sport in the same sense as soccer, football or track where you have a bunch of people using their bodies to play a game,” said Adam Braude, 17, a junior at Jefferson Community School.
“It is a team of people working together to accomplish a task, putting their minds together to build a thing that will perform the task that it was created to do.”
Braude’s teammates agree.
Spencer Drewry, 17, a junior at West Sound Academy in Poulsbo said that robotics “is extremely physical and requires a lot of thinking and moving around.”
Said Port Townsend High School senior Rose Ridder, 17: “You have to be in the zone, your head has got to be there.
“If something isn’t working, you have to be composed enough to finish the task.”
The students are three of the 15 team members, playing a sport that has caught fire among students for its ability to combine competition and challenge with the learning of a new skill.
The team has made remarkable progress in its second year of existence, earning a surprise slot in a world championship competition that takes place April 22-25 in St. Louis, Mo.
There, more than 17,000 students ages 6 to 18 from around the world will compete.
The team scored well in the Pacific Northwest District Championship on April 4 but not enough to move on.
That changed when a team that placed ahead of them declined to attend.
This has thrown a wrench into the machinery, since the team now must raise $15,000 quickly to cover the $5,000 entry fee and expenses for the team to make the trip.
“The team has reached an unexpected emergency situation in terms of funds,” Braude said.
Ridder continued “and with that comes monetary responsibilities that the team was not predicting.”
Sam Jasper, 16, a Port Townsend High School sophomore, said “The key thing is that we had no clue this was happening.
“We weren’t looking into actually going to this competition this year but it happened, and we aren’t sure we will have another chance.”
The competition is sponsored by telecommunications company Qualcomm, a company based in San Diego, Calif., and managed by FIRST, an acronym for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which issues the same challenge to every participating team.
The competition is expected to include 600 robots driven by 3,000 active teams in a fight to the finish.
This year’s challenge, issued in January, was to create a machine that can stack and recycle materials as a preparation for recycling.
From this FIRST has created a game called “Recycle Rush,” where robots from different schools both compete and cooperate with each other and are scored on a point system.
While the challenge is universal, the projects all approach the problem differently, resulting in a diversity of machines.
The team’s interpretation of the task resulted in the 6-foot-6-inch-tall Mad Stacks.
The team members said they love the immediate challenge and the adrenaline rush of a sport where, like the Super Bowl, an entire season’s outcome can hinge on what happens during the last few seconds.
“Even if we never go into the robotics, this is something we will be able to do all our lives,” Ridder said.
“This gives kids an amazing experience, to be able to work with engineering,” Jasper said.
“With the fundraising we need to be able to talk to people, be respectful to each other and create our own organization, which gives us valuable life skills.
Specific team donations can be made at http://tinyurl.com/PDN-Robotics or through the Northwest Maritime Center. Go to http://nwmaritime.org/get-involved/donate/ and specify that the money is to go to FRC Team 4918.
For more information, contact team sponsor Austin Henry at 360-775-0147 or austinh054@gmail.com.