UPDATE: Below is the article that ran in the April 1 edition of The Covington Maple Valley Reporter.
After the press deadline, it was reported that the robot was returned to Tahoma High School early Wednesday morning.
For that full story, click here.
ORIGINAL STORY —
Other teams, supporters help the club prepare for district competition
The Tahoma Robotics team was on cloud nine March 26 after finishing in first place at their competition. They were either third or fifth overall in the district, which meant the team qualified for districts in two weeks, Alexander Gibbs said, secretary of communications for the robotics team. The top 64 out of 168 teams make it to districts.
Their happiness and excitement ended quickly. The following morning, the team got an email from one of their mentors telling them their trailer that held their robot, tools and some of Harbor Mountain View High School’s tools was stolen. The trailer had been at their mentor’s house and when he woke up, it was gone. The trailer was found near Auburn, but everything inside was stolen, Gibbs said. About $30,000 and endless amounts of hours and hard work was taken from the robotics team.
The district and many high schools have been helping out, Gibbs said. The amount of support has been fantastic. They are very thankful for every team and everyone who has helped in some way. Even opposing teams have been lending a hand, letting them use their practice fields, tools and anything else they might need.
The robotics team doesn’t have to start from scratch, they have a practice robot they used before they made the competition robot. Everything was designed on computers so they have all of the parts they are missing, Gibbs said. All they have to do is clean up the practice robot and add the parts they are missing. Thankfully, they pulled off some important parts from their competition robot before they put it in the trailer, so they at least have those few pieces, Gibbs said.
The team has one more competition Saturday in Auburn but since they already qualified for districts, they are focused on getting their practice robot up to par to their competition robot.
After the district competition in Portland in two weeks, the top 32 teams in the Pacific Northwest will go to the world championship in St. Louis where the top 600 teams in the world compete.
