HOUSTON — Schools around Washington are creating rising engineering stars through robotics.
Tahoma High School’s team 2046 Bear Metal is one of 20 in the Pacific Northwest Region competing in Houston at the FIRST Championship.
The For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) competition is considered the worlds largest celebrations of STEM for students.
The teams advancing to the championship have succeeded in other competitions, like districts, to get here.
Six hundred teams from both the United States and a number of other countries around the globe participate.
“There's probably about 20,000 people there,” Tahoma High senior Brandon DeFrance said. “It’s just huge. There's just field after field of just robots and impressive, amazing people."
Brandon, his sister Maya, and a few dozen other Tahoma High students are in Houston for the competition after a year of designing, building and perfecting a robot.
Students play different roles on the team and all of the hands-on work is done by the them.
"The never-ending pursuit of curiosity and more knowledge and technical skills is captivating," Bear Metal president and senior at Tahoma High School Brady Hogg said.
The students in these competitions represent our future engineers. Many students that compete in robotics plan to have a future STEM profession.
"I want to follow a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) career path,” Maya DeFrance said. “Maybe aerospace engineering."
The teams are made up of boys and girls that have discovered this passion at a young age.
"Talking with the fabrication and the design group and being able to work out what the problems are and how to get that pass off correctly handled - it's a great experience," Hogg said.
The students at Tahoma said their work ethic and collaboration has improved as a result of their work in robotics.
"I am not the same person I was three years ago," Hogg said.
The FIRST Championship can be streamed online April 18-20.