{"id":10821,"date":"2019-03-15T17:42:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-15T17:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=10821"},"modified":"2019-03-15T17:42:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-15T17:42:26","slug":"blaine-county-robotics-keeps-raising-the-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/15\/blaine-county-robotics-keeps-raising-the-bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaine County Robotics Keeps Raising The Bar"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY Mike McKenna<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
The BCB Bots add to their collection of awards.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Wood River Robotics team has two problems.<\/p>\n

The first is that they\u2019ve run out of room to put all their trophies. The second is something we can help with. They need our assistance to send them to the World Championships next month in Kentucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really excited to represent our school at Worlds,\u201d sophomore Tate Pearce said. \u201cNow we have to figure out how to pay for it, so we\u2019re holding a raffle for a cool bike from Power House (Pub) and a fly-fishing reel from Waterworks-Lamson, and we even have a GoFundMe page.\u201d (See below for more details.)<\/p>\n

The BCB Bots, as the program is called for short, was created in 2009. That\u2019s when Kevin Lupton, who has been teaching engineering and architecture at Wood River High since 1994, was invited to enter a team in a Vex Robotics contest at his alma mater, Utah State University. Despite not knowing much about robotics contests, Mr. Lupton rallied a few students together and followed the advice of his master\u2019s thesis professor, who had offered the invitation: \u201cIf you wait until you\u2019re ready, you never will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 2012, Wood River High School was hosting the first robotics contest in the state. And our community of impassioned students and dedicated teachers have been setting the robotics bar high in the Gem State ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just jump in feet first and learn while you go. That\u2019s a lot of what robotics is,\u201d Mr. Lupton said, explaining that robotics is \u201cfor students who are driven. For engineering students who want more. It\u2019s a competitive team and it\u2019s their winter sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophomore Elizabeth Baledge is a member of one of the four high school and middle school teams. There are also teams at both Hailey and Bellevue elementary schools. Each season the teams take on problems developed by Vex Robotics and then compete at a handful of tournaments before, hopefully, qualifying to compete against the best of the other roughly 9,000 robotics teams worldwide.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a mental challenge, but there\u2019s so much more to it than just calculus, algebra or geometry,\u201d Elizabeth explained. \u201cYou can get an idea and bring it to life. A lot of people in robotics have pretty open minds and are willing to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being able to work as a team is key to the success of the BCB Bots program. Intelligence and effort alone won\u2019t get a team to the World Championships four years in a row or allow it to win the Excellence Award at every tournament so far this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe help each other and push each other to do better,\u201d Elizabeth said.<\/p>\n

Both Wood River High School and Wood River Middle School will be sending teams to the World Championships in Kentucky on back-to-back weekends in April. To help keep their inspiring story going, please visit their fundraising webpage at www.tinyurl.com\/tws-bots or contact Coach Lupton at (208) 578-5020, ext. 2224.<\/p>\n

The BCB Bots will be selling raffle tickets and putting on a demonstration at The Chamber\u2019s Business After Hours this month at Mountain Humane on Thursday, March 21, from 5-7 p.m. As usual, the \u201cBAH\u201d is free and the public is welcome.<\/p>\n

Mike McKenna is the executive director of The Chamber \u2013 Hailey & The Wood River Valley. He can be reached at Mike@ValleyChamber.org or by calling (208) 788-3484.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY Mike McKenna The Wood River Robotics team has two problems. The first is that they\u2019ve run out of room to put all their trophies. The second is something we can help with. They need our assistance to send them to the World Championships next month in Kentucky. \u201cWe\u2019re really excited to represent our school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,38],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chamber-corner","8":"category-sponsored"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}