Rotary visits Alpha 2130 robotics team

March 21, 2017

The Bonners Ferry Rotary held its meeting at the Bonners Ferry Middle School March 14 for a demonstration of the competition bot designed and built by the Bonners Ferry Robotics Team, Alpha 2130. The team gets only six weeks at the beginning of each year to build their robots for FIRST competition. The 2017 FIRST SteamWorks competition will be held at the Olympic Oval in Calgary, Canada, April 6-8, and this year, 85,000 students will be participating, include teams from China, Turkey, Mexico, Australia, the United States and Canada. This is the 11th year for Bonners Ferry High School Alpha 2130, and the team truly feels as if they are a team. In the beginning, kids had to start each year from scratch and fumble their way through. Juniors and seniors now work with younger students, training replacements to continue progress with the team rather than having to start over as upperclassmen graduate and move on. Departments on the robotics team include the business, electrical, programmers and builders. And within the business department, students must learn to write grants and other requests for sponsorship and fundraising. FIRST Robotics benefits students each year, not only in the field of science and technology by building and programming robots, but also in mentorship and leadership skills and building self-confidence in young people. The Middle School is hoping to add a robotics class to the curriculum in the next year or so to interest students in participating at the class level. Bonners Ferry Rotary is proud of how hard these kids work and of their accomplishments through the robotics program! For more information, or to help sponsor or support this great team, visit www.BFHSRobotics.com or their FaceBook page, https://www.facebook.com/FirstTeam2. To watch a live stream of the competition, visit www.theBlueAlliance.com.