Faculty mentor Ryan Sackett, at right, works with a group of student members of the Power Hawks, a robotics club at South River High School. Students are, from left, Maddi Schaffer, 14, James Batterdan, 17, and Nick Dellis, 17.
By Mitchelle Stephenson
Published in the Capital on 4/2/2009
The Power Hawks, a robotics team based at South River High School in Edgewater, is an extracurricular activity for the 40 students who participate; however, the level of involvement is a little more intense than for other clubs.
During the build season, which runs from early January until early April, the team meets every weekday for three or four hours, plus both weekend days for five to seven hours each day. They meet to design and construct a robot that meets a specific set of criteria set forth by First Robotics, a national competition for high school engineering students.
Even when they aren't in competition mode, the club meets because they have a rigorous schedule not only to design and test components for their robot, but also to raise funds, according to Ryan Sackett, faculty advisor. They're a self-supported club, and each competition the team enters has a fee of around $6,000. In addition to those costs, the parts needed for building a modern robot don't come cheap.
Ryan starts at the beginning of the school year by recruiting students to join the club that is open to all grades. His captain this year is senior Janina Vaitkus; the team co-captain is Nick Bellas, 17. They help with paperwork, fundraising and oversight of the project.
The older kids mentor the newcomers and, after getting acquainted with each of the seven sub-teams, students find their place within the club. The sub-teams include: Electrical, captained by Patrick McKenna, 18; CAD, captained by Katie Breitwieser, 18; Drive, captained by Nick Bellas, 17; Mechanisms, captained by Diana Bartone, 18; Programming, co-captained by Matt Keen and Robert Waddell, both 18; and Controls, captained by Chase Kindig, 17.
The club also meets regularly with some of their professional mentors, like Jim Williams, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and Theresa Hunt, an engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Neither have children at the school, but during the build season, these volunteers come once a week to give the students their expertise.
This year, the club decided to participate in two First Robotics meets: the Washington, D.C., competition in mid-February, and the Naval Academy competition in early March.
On Jan. 3, the team received their instructions. They learned that they needed to build a robot to play the game, "Lunacy." The theme is a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing. The teams got mandatory large plastic moon wheels, and a big box of what Ryan described as "parts."
All competitors in the robot competition get the same instructions and components. From there, they have about six weeks to design and build their robot.
"We tried to be done in five weeks with one week for testing, but it worked out that we finished with two days of testing," Ryan said.
"In engineering, there is a lot of trouble-shooting," added Katie Breitwieser of the CAD unit.
First has several levels of competition, and the Power Hawks are in the most advanced level. Ryan is hoping that with the Science Technology, Engineering, Mathmatics (STEM) program coming to the school that the prestige of the Power Hawks team will grow.
"I love seeing all these kids get excited over something that benefits their future." Ryan said. He continued, "a lot of these kids play sports. They will not go anywhere with sports - but they will have futures in engineering."
"I've gotten a lot better at leadership skills," co-captain Nick said of what he's taken from the experience.
"It was a lot of hard work getting to the competition and it was intense once we got there, but all the teams helped each other out, cheered for each other, and it was worth the effort," freshman member Drew Hutchison said. He added, "it was fun."
The team made it to the semi-finals at the D.C. competition and won the Xerox Innovation Award at the Naval Academy event.
The Power Hawks don't have any other competitions planned for the near future, but will continue with their fundraising - and tinkering with designs and ideas for the rest of the year.
The Lothian Ruritan Club gave out several $1,000 scholarships last week to six accomplished high school seniors from the area. The main criterion for selection was community service, and the scholarship money may be used for any college or technical school. The local winners were: from Southern High School: Nicholas Boyd, Kelci Sundquist and Jeffrey Griffith; from South River High School: Janina Vaitkus and Emma Fiege.
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