Congratulations to our local kids of the Boulder City High School Robotics Team for their recent win at the First Robotics Las Vegas Regional Competition!
These fine young men and women got their first major regional win since this group started. We’ve told you about these impressive folks before HERE. The BCHS Robotics Program was started fourteen years ago by John Richner, Harold Bagley, and Sy Grothe. The current advisor is Garth Schulz and the mentor for the group is Vernon Harkins. Garth has been part of the program for eight years, while Vernon has been lending his expertise for 12 years. Both men are enthusiastic about working with the students, helping to develop their engineering skills as they build a new robot each year. The group is open to boys and girls in grades 9-12 who attend the high school.
Each competition season begins in early January, when the game is revealed to all the teams. Participating teams are given weight and size limits and a budget for their project. The student engineers decide how they want to build their robot and create a plan for doing so, while developing their engineering skills. These are important skills to obtain because high school graduates with robotic experience can earn a significant amount of money in scholarships for college.
This year, they told us they got some additional programming assistance and it allowed them to substantially step up their game! But hey folks – these competitions are expensive. The entry fee alone for this Vegas event is $6,000, and that doesn’t count the costs to build their robot, or travel expenses when they go on the road – and they deserve the support to be able to do that. They are competing against schools that are insanely well funded (like, NASA is our sponsor, dude…). So give them a hand will ya?
To help with fundraising, the team gives demonstrations at community events like Spring Jamboree and WurstFest. They are also available to provide demonstrations for other community groups by contacting the Team Advisor, Mr Garth Schulz HERE.
