Sasha Elenko, Co-Content Editor
For the second time in three years, the robotics team — the “Vashon Pi-r8s” — are State Champions and will advance to the Super Regional Championship in Tacoma on March 10-12.
Of the nine current team members, three students: junior Garrett Freebourn, senior Ben Gallagher and senior John Kehl were part of the team that last reached the Super Regional Championship in 2015. That was the first year that a VHS robotics team ever qualified for the competition, which was then held in Oakland, California.
The team meets regularly outside of school, as many of the members do not attend the high school. Three team members attend Running Start or are homeschooled. A fourth, Eli Canterbury, is an eighth grader at McMurray Middle School.
The club used to be split up into two teams. However, many members graduated last year, forcing the teams to be consolidated. This school year marks the first time in recent years that the robotics club has had only one team.
“Last year, the team that I was on did pretty poorly; we didn’t make it to State,” senior John Kehl said. “The team environment was not great, and we didn’t get along that well.”
Kehl entered this year expecting similar results.
“I didn’t have high hopes,” Kehl said. “I was just kind of hoping to have fun [and] see where we can get. And we sort of set this goal that was like, ‘Oh, if we make it to Super [Regionals] that would be really cool’ … — but here we are now.”
According to Kehl, a major reason for the team’s success this year has been the team environment.
“We’re focusing a lot more on getting everybody involved in the process of building and designing and making sure everyone’s doing something,” Kehl said. “When you can get that going, people want to do better for the team because they feel like they have something invested in it.
“So people have been working a lot harder this year and … we’ve gotten all this cool stuff done.”
Of course, no team can be successful without countless hours of preparation, but according to Kehl, the team has managed to be successful while also staying relaxed.
The Super Regional Championship will be held at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center. Seventy-two teams from 13 states will compete, with the top 30 advancing to the National Championship later this year.