The programming is all done ahead of time.
Once the robot is turned loose, it’s all about watching and hoping.
“It was a lot of pressure,” said Vivian Farris. “It was kind of nerve-racking.”
Farris and 12 other Coupeville Elementary School fifth-graders had plenty of reasons to smile and breath a big sigh of relief last weekend.
They not only participated in their first event at the First Lego League robotic competition in Snohomish Saturday, they turned a lot of heads.
Two teams from Coupeville’s first-year robotics club finished in the top 12 among 41 participating teams in the robotics portion of the state regional qualifier at Glacier Peak High School.
The girls team finished seventh to earn a spot into the Western Washington semifinals in Shoreline next month.
“We’re real proud,” said Mark Noste, a second-grade teacher who serves as club co-advisor along with fifth-grade teacher Katja Willeford. “The kids did great. They scored high in things like respect and teamwork.”
Coupeville assembled a robotics team after Noste and Willeford applied for a grant and got the necessary funding from the Community Foundation for Coupeville Public Schools.
After receiving the financial support to launch, the club got coaching from teachers and parents and mentoring from Oak Harbor’s established Whidbey Island Wildcats Robotics Club to soar.
The club competes at the First Lego League level of Washington First Robotics, which has four programs for different age groups designed to give students a path and exposure to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) throughout their school career.
First Lego League is for ages 9 through 14.
The Coupeville Robotics Club is the first of its kind in the school district, however, the subject is now being taught at the secondary school level.
Club members got their footing last year in the elementary school’s Tech Club, which exposed them to robot kits and the skills to program the robots’ moves on a computer screen.
The robots are built with Legos.
“They had a year of programming experience,” Noste said, “and a bunch of them had been to the Oak Harbor robotics camps, so they had the basics really. They aren’t truly rookies, but for the competition, they are.”
All participating teams learn of the competition’s themed challenge in the fall, then get to work building and programming a small robot to accomplish various tasks.
This year’s theme was titled the “Trash Trek Challenge,” with teams graded on a game and project centered around the global issue of trash. Teams also are graded on the league’s core values such as teamwork, the spirit of friendly competition and helping others.
Coupeville’s teams consisted of 13 students: Aiden Anderson, Connor Bachmann, Jesse Cowan, Wesley Cowan, Gwen Gustafson, Orion Iverson, Billy Larsen, Joven Light, Abigail Place, Hope Sinclair, Helen Strelow, Alexander Wasik and Farris.
Taleena Sinclair helped Willeford coach Coupeville’s Blue Lightning team.
Caroline Jungmann, an Oak Harbor High School student, has served as the Coupeville club’s mentor.
“We’d be lost puppies without Caroline’s help,” Willeford said.
