Howe R

Robotics is a popular extracurricular activity at Howe High School, as this year there are 16 members The team is very excited that robotics is recognized as a UIL competition in 2016 and that means they can obtain the same recognition as any other UIL sport or academic competition

The Howe Robotics team, under the direction of Betsy Friedman, have entered the CoCo Best area contest which will be held at Prosper High School on Saturday, October 22 More than 50 other teams will compete with Howe for the chance to move onto the regional competition and then on to the state UIL competition

This year’s theme is “Bet the Farm” The robot must be able to harvest corn, tomatoes, and lettuce as well as open a water valve The Howe Robotics slogan is “Lettuce Harvest Your Crops” and they plan to harvest a win

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Houston and Texas Central railway brought to both towns in the early years of their existence Not soon after the towns were formed, they started playing football against each other But those early years prior to 1920 formation of the UIL do not formally count and Howe didn't even field a UIL sanctioned team until 1935

Howe first played Van Alstyne on October 24, 1941 which the Panthers won, 31-7. The Spike was created before the 2001 season and that was the year Van Alstyne started the current 9game winning streak over Howe It also happened to be the same time that Van Alstyne outgrew Howe in enrollment numbers due to the Georgetown edition in their community

Before the current winning streak, Van Alstyne led the series, 25-17-2 but now have double the amount of Howe's wins thanks to the recent stretch Howe's longest winning streak versus the Panthers was four games from 1977-1980

When the trophy was originated in 2001, then Van Alstyne Head Coach Randy Matthews told the Van Alstyne Leader, "Because of the closeness of the two towns and what this rivalry means to so many people, I hope everybody will be up for this game and prepared to play

When you have a game like this with so much emotion, there's always big plays involved "

The Spike was is akin to Sherman and Denison's Battle of the Axe which Walker was a radio broadcaster for those games from 19942003 and television broadcaster in 2008 "The community involvement and t comes with that Sherman Den Axe is so impressive and How Alstyne had the same rivalry, b scale We were able to work w Alstyne back in 2001 to share and make this something speci won't be truly special until it c trophy case " said Walker