Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sciborgs 2018
Students from Colfax, Colton and Moscow stop to pose for a photo during a work session on their robot in January.
For the fifth consecutive year, the Palouse area high school robotics team is going to the world championships – a meeting of 700 teams in Houston April 18-21.
Another 700 will gather in Detroit, the top two teams then advancing to a final competition, with other awards earned along the way.
The Sciborgs qualified April 5-7 by finishing in the top 24 of 64 teams at the Pacific Northwest Championships at Memorial Coliseum in Portland. The Palouse team joins two others from Eastern Washington to advance; Kettle Falls and Medical Lake.
To qualify for Portland, the Sciborgs finished 18th in the northwest district (of 156 teams in Oregon, Washington and Alaska), after competitions in Yakima and Spokane Valley.
The team – made up of 38 kids from Colfax, Colton and Moscow – will send 14 to Houston, along with four mentors.
“We're just so proud of the team and to represent Whitman County, and beyond state borders with Moscow,” said Helena Johnson, a Sciborgs mentor.
The team's robot will be shipped to Houston by FedEx, which delivers free of charge for teams that make it to Houston/Detroit. The Scriborgs' tool cart and supplies -- such as 15-pound batteries -- will be packed in a rented truck to be driven to Texas, also with tool kits and supplies for the Medical Lake, Kettle Falls and Umatilla, Ore., teams.
Sciborgs team members set to go to Houston are; Ellen O'Toole, Francis O'Toole, Colton; Connor Johnson, Rebekah Huber, Daniel Drymon, Colfax; Micah Brewer, Sara Moore, Will Cole, Tristan Call, Callum McCubbin, A.J. Lariviere, Nick Call and Meghan Dutta, Pullman, and Joseph Miller, Moscow.
Mentors on the trip will be Aaron Johnson, Helena Johnson, Andy Miller and Doug Call.
More than 50 countries will be represented at the world championships.
The robotics program in which the Sciborgs compete is part of F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), founded in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1989 by Dean Kamen, an inventor and entrepreneur who also developed the portable dialysis machine and Segway Human Transporter, through his company, DEKA Research & Development Corp.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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