Reporter ISSAQUAH | SAMMAMISH
Friday, March 30, 2012
www.issaquahreporter.com
Finding Focus In lean times, human services encouraged to prioritize Skyline Spartans (Spartabots) compete at the FIRST Robotics Competition March 23. From the left, Daniel Wilson, Blake Talbot, and Michael Lee.
BY CELESTE GRACEY CGRACEY@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
CELESTE GRACEY, Issaquah & Sammamish Reporter
ROBOT MADNESS
Sammamish and Issaquah high schools compete in national robotics competition BY CELESTE GRACEY CGRACEY@ISSAQUAHREPORTER.COM
The competition is about to begin and hopes are high for the Spartabots team. Their robot design is more conventional than their first attempt last year. At the ring of a buzzer, six robots begin shooting basketballs from their caddies – two misses for the Spartabots, but there are still more balls to be had. Driver Blake Talbot directs his bot forward when its arm, designed to push down a bridge, begins slapping the ground at random. Then a chain breaks, making the boxy machine spin in circles. “Everything on the robot went haywire,” Talbot says. The team is rattled. The bot had worked fine during testing. Talbot then cracks a smile, “I was hoping it would be this exciting.” The tournament was far from over. Skyline High School’s robotics club still had six more qualifying rounds at the FIRST Robotics Competition. With almost 100 teams, some international, it’s one of the biggest in the nation. They competed at the CenturyLink Event Center March 22-24.
“It teaches us a tremendous amount of engineering.”
Cities need to target specific needs with their human services grants instead of sharing the picnic with too many ants. At least that’s what David Okimoto, a senior vice president at United Way of King County, told four human services commissions from Eastside cities this month. “This is the hand that we’ve been dealt,” he said. “We’re going to need to prioritize.” Group from Issaquah, Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond met to commiserate and share ideas earlier this month. Most cities on the Eastside have come with a spectrum approach – provide support at every level of need. With dollars thinning at the federal, state and city level, Okimoto challenged them to stop trying to keep so many programs alive and to focus on a few specific needs. None of the cities have prioritized in such a clear way, and some openly grappled with how a city could even begin to do that. “Ultimately it boils down to a value,” Okimoto said, adding that most of the cuts at the state level have primarily SEE HUMAN SERVICES, 5
– Student Michael Lee
The challenge was to design robots that can shoot hoops and balance on a teeter-totter type bridge. Each round is only a few minutes, and six robots at a time compete for the balls and the bridges. Skyline’s robotics program is in its second year. Students pushed hard to keep the program alive. They had to find a teacher willing to oversee the club and engineers to mentor them.
“It was too great an opportunity to mess up,” said team captain Michael Lee. “It teaches us a tremendous amount of engineering.” Boeing put up the $5,000 entry fee, and the Issaquah Schools Foundations provided about $6,000 for materials, which was still a few grand short of the cost. During the second round, Talbot watches SEE ROBOTS, 5
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