Scorpions to show their love of robotics on Valentine's Day

  • Published
  • By Rebecca Amber
  • Staff writer
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  This Valentine's Day, love is in the air. That is, love of robotics.

The Desert Junior-Senior High Scorpion Robotics Club is in their second year and heading to the L.A. Regional Championship Tournament Feb. 14 in Monrovia, California.

Last year's all-male team had 11 members and advanced to the West Coast Super Regionals.

"This year, we didn't know how many students were going to come out for the team," said Andrew Whitten, varsity coach. "There were 28 kids on the first day waiting outside the Center of Excellence when I drove in and I almost had a heart attack. Boys and girls, all ages."

In fact, there were so many students that they chose to create two teams, Varsity Team #7227 Scorpion Robotics and Junior Varsity Team #9074 Scorpiobotics. The teams are divided by grade level. J.V. is grades 7 to 9 and varsity is 10 to 12.

Unlike conventional sports teams, both varsity and junior varsity go to the same competitions and sometimes compete against each other. Hunter Sapp, grade seven, is the J.V. outreach coordinator.

"We're a rookie team against high school teams; they have more experience," said Sapp.

He added though, the junior varsity team has some advantages of their own.

"We're the newer generation so I guess we have a little more experience with the technology that's around right now; they have a little bit less of the technology that we're capable of," remarked Sapp. 

While the teams are both highly competitive, they strive for gracious professionalism and the two teams even look out for each other. 

"Our sister team, the varsity, helps us out a lot and then we help them out when they need something," said Sapp. 

Both participate in what is known as FIRST Tech Challenge, which is For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

Each year at the start of the season, a new "game" is released to all the teams. This year's game is called Cascade Effect. Students work together to design, build and program their robot using sound engineering principles. At competitions, they compete in an alliance format against other teams. The teams compete in two qualifying tournaments and must qualify at one of those tournaments to advance to regionals.

At the first tournament, Dec. 6 in Monrovia, California., the varsity team and their robot qualified for regionals. They were also recipients of the Control Award, which is given to a team that demonstrates exceptional coding prowess and innovative use of sensors. Though they didn't advance at that tournament, the J.V. team was also nominated for the Think Award, given to the team that best reflects the "journey" they took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season.

The junior varsity team with their robot, Binary Effect, qualified for regionals at the second tournament, Jan. 17, in Palmdale, California. This time the J.V. team came home with the Control Award and their coach, Ana Franco, was recognized with the Compass Award. The award is given to an adult coach or mentor who exemplifies the mission of FIRST and is inspirational and encouraging to the members of the team.

"The reason it's such a big honor [for Franco]; I think is because you're nominated by your team," said Whitten. "The students have to make a video and submit it ahead of time."

As a female coach and electrical engineer, Franco is excited to see girls on the team this year, including her daughter. Assistant head coach, Tech. Sgt. Hector De La Garza III, an F-22 avionics system technician, also has a daughter on the team.

"It's very important. I know when I was in college I was the only girl in my engineering courses, especially electrical engineering," said Franco. "I'm always reminding them 'power girl.'"

One of the female students, Alyssa Storch, grade 10, is a member of the varsity team.

"They got so far last year, they went to super regionals," said Storch. "I thought, 'if they did that good without women what would happen if we put women in there?'"

At the start of the season, Storch said it all felt a little overwhelming. But as the season progressed, she started to feel more confident in her abilities and even saw her grades go up in her Math and Science classes.

"To me robotics is about being a team, combining your minds to form something that can do a job spotlessly," said Storch. "We've become a very good team, we've become very close."

In addition to learning how to build robots, the students are encouraged to participate in outreach activities. This year the teams sent care packages to Edwards' deployed military members after Thanksgiving. One of the care package recipients flew an American flag on a combat mission in their honor and will personally deliver the flag when he returns to base.

"FIRST is so multidimensional. It really teaches the students to do a lot of things other just use hand tools and power tools and build robots," said Whitten.

But that's not what Whitten expected when he signed up to be a mentor last year. Whitten studied engineering in school with classes in controls and artificial intelligence. He thought he would be teaching algorithms and assisting with programming for the robots autonomous mode.

"I didn't realize there would be so much other stuff to help teach them. You also teach things like conflict resolution and time management."

His wife, Dana, joined as the varsity assistant coach and business manager for both teams.

"As a coach you have all these grand ideas like, 'I have all this knowledge I can impart on them and you get there and you realize, there's a lot of other things they need,'" she said.

"Honestly, we really love the students; they're a real joy to work with."

The coaches don't run the team alone. They have a team of mentors who volunteer faithfully at each practice.

"We're so thankful that we've had a good turn out with mentors. The four of us couldn't do this."

The Scorpion Robotics teams are always looking for additional mentors and new or used hand and power tools. For more information about the Scorpion Robotics teams, or to donate tools email scorpion-robotics@googlegroups.com.

The L.A. Regionals will take place at Monrovia High School Feb. 14.