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Photograph courtesy of WGHS
Pushing Tin: The Willow Glen High School junior/senior robotics class won several other competitions before making their recent trip to Orlando, Fla.
WGHS students compete in national robot tournament
By Melissa Matchak
Six weeks of hard work and long nights have paid off for the Willow Glen High School robotics team, which finished in the top third of the 336 teams competing in the national championship in Orlando, Fla., on April 6-7.
The entirely student-run team is made up of 20 students, all of whom played a different role in building a 130-pound, 3- by 5-foot robot according to a set of rules unveiled in January. According to Mark Selden, the teacher-mentor for the team, this is the first year of participation for all the members of the team.
"The team was extremely passionate about this," Selden said. "There were a lot of late nights in a row, and they were completely enveloped in the project."
Selden said the Willow Glen team decided to focus on one aspect of the competition arena, which involved the robot picking up 7-foot-tall posts and placing them on a beam--similar to a teeter-totter--while attempting to keep the beam level.
The team's work paid off at the local and regional levels, as well. At the Silicon Valley regional competition, the team ranked fifth out of 54 teams, and took the gold medal as part of a five-team alliance.
Selden said the first part of the competitions includes narrowing the large number of competing teams down to eight teams. The eight are then broken down into four groups of two teams each. Then three of the teams are chosen from those that were eliminated to form a five-team alliance for the final competition. At the regional competition in Los Angeles on March 15-17, Willow Glen High School's robotics team placed third in the alliance competition, after being chosen from the original 47 participating teams.
"This year's rules were extremely complicated," Selden said. "All the teams approached the same set of rules in completely different ways."
Selden said the team had to raise thousands of dollars in order to participate in the national competition, which seven team members attended. He said the community's support was encouraging to the team.
"There was such an outpouring of support from the local community, the students felt like they were representing the downtown Willow Glen community, not just the high school," Selden said.
According to Selden, local businesses, including Washington Mutual Bank, Downey Savings, Century 21 and the Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Company were a big help in funding the team's trip to Orlando.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
