Come For The Pizza, Stay For The Robots

Herndon High School's Robotics Team has a great deal to smile about following their successes at the Bayou Regional in New Orleans as well as the Washington, D.C. Regional. In both competitions they proceeded to the final rounds.  

"At the end of last year nearly half of our team graduated, so we weren't really sure what to expect coming into this year, but we've had a lot of real quality students step up and lead," said Josh Ence, Herndon high school physics teacher and robotics team coach. 

The team was also helped by mentor Dave Lavery, program executive for solar system exploration.

One of this year's challenges for the robotics team was to successfully build a robot which would become an integral part of a game called, "logo motion." Robots from each team were responsible for hanging inner tubes of three different sizes on a rack. Teams were then given points based on how high or low the inner tubes were placed and what level the tubes were in.  

"By the second competition in Washington, D.C., we had the competition experience and it showed," said Herndon High senior Amy Frankhouser.  Frankhouser was chosen out of one thousand students for her leadership, which awarded her the Dean's List Finalist Award.  

Self proclaimed "rookie" and Herndon high school sophomore, Abigail Ackerman joined the robotics team this year after her interest in the power of building things with her own hands began to grow.  

"I love my team and working with the power tools and building different elements of the robot to get it just right," said Ackerman.