Lindbergh taking its robot national

Hoping to start a tradition and pay tribute to a mentor, the Lindbergh High School robotics team is almost on its way to the FIRST Robotics Championships in St. Louis in late April.

The team has almost raised enough money to travel to the national competition. The students are looking for community support to close the gap between the $19,000 they have raised and the $23,000 needed to cover registration, travel, lodging, and shipping their tools to the competition.

Going to the competition means a lot to these students who secured their place at the championships by winning the Rookie All-Star Award during a FIRST Robotics competition at Seattle’s Qwest Field Events Center in March.

At that competition, the Lindbergh robot bested more than 100 other teams and was designed, fabricated, wired and programmed by students of the 23-member team.

“It was a daunting task when we found out what we had to do,” said Joe Streifel, a Lindbergh senior and vice president of the team.

The robotics team started in January and took six weeks to construct its robot.

“The most remarkable aspect of our clubs success, in my opinion, is that this is a student run organization,” said Matt Randall, Lindbergh teacher and robotics team adviser. “Students did all of the work designing, machining parts for, wiring, and programming the robot. As an organization our students also run the project management and public relations for the club.”

The team, he said, has a “hands-off” rule so that the students are the ones who do the work, although there is lots of teaching that goes on behind the scenes by the coaches.

One of the students’ mentors was Gerry Desmarais, who passed away earlier this year. Desmarais was an expert design engineer at Boeing and volunteered his time to meet with team leaders about the design process and helped them come up with a project management plan for the six-week build season.

He was an essential part of getting Lindbergh’s FIRST Robotics Team started this year, said Randall.

“He was a huge help to us when we started the season and assisted us greatly in establishing order in the way we do things,” said Streifel.

Randall said that during the summer before the season, Desmarais wrote a grant through Boeing that awarded the team $6,500, which covered the registration fee for the FIRST Robotics competition.

“Gerry passed away during the second week of our build season, which was really hard for our students, especially for our team leaders who knew him well,” Randall said.

Instead of naming their robot, as most teams do, the Lindbergh team decided to dedicate this year’s robot in memory of Desmarais. They’ve also set up a scholarship program in honor of him.

Leena Hoang, the team’s PR leader, said the judges at the FIRST competition in March saw that the amount of work they put into their robot was more than any other rookie team, which is why they got the award. She said everyone on the team was able to talk about their creation when asked at the competition and answer questions.

Lindbergh will compete against about 300 teams if it can raise enough money to go to the championship in St. Louis April 27-30.

“We’re a first-year team; a lot of us didn’t know what to expect,” said Streifel. “Through this I think we’re started something that is going to live for a long time at Lindbergh High School.”

How to help

To help the Lindbergh High School robotics team get to the FIRST Robotics Championships in St. Louis, visit https://www.rentonschools.us/touchbase/products-main.aspx and click the box marked “Robotics Donation Account.”

TEAM MEMBERS

Aman Buttar

Dylon Craig

David Foulds

Patricia Garcia

Joshua Goodwin

Brandon Hartshorn

Jason Hennig

Leena Hoang

Elizabeth Holm

Zachary Holm

Dominic Luu