This past weekend March 18-20,Shenandoah Valley Governor’s School’s FIRST Robotics Team (The Governators) competed in the FIRST Robotics Hampton Virginia District Event in Portsmouth.
In this competition, the team won the Engineering Inspiration Award! The Engineering Inspiration Award celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school and community.
In addition, the team qualified for the finals for the first time in school history! This comes the weekend after the team was awarded the Judge’s Award in the Southwest competition. After 8 events in FIRST Chesapeake, the Governators Team #3361 rank 45 out of 132 teams that have competed in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Congratulations to the team, for their recognition and outstanding work!
Team Members are:
Erin Fosnocht
Anthony Guzman
Benjamin Lahn
Allison Mitchell
Rebecca Pereles
Ben Rochford
Haley Sanders
Jeremiah Sanders
Nathaniel Shields
Tucker Stott
Emily Vollmer
Lucy Weidner
Chris Martin, Coach and Mentor
Zach Clasbey, Innovative Refrigeration Systems, Mentor
Matt Fenzel, Innovative Refrigeration Systems, Mentor
Jim Eiland, Retired Navy, Founder of Jeeland R&D, Mentor
Tom Argiro, Student, Bridgewater College, Mentor
See a wonderful News Virginian article about the team here!
A special thanks to the team’s sponsors!
EyeOne, Verona
Thomas Weidner, Attorney at Law
Jim Snead Ford, Waynesboro
Click here for video coverage of the event.
The 2016 game, FIRST Stronghold, was announced on January 9th. Students had from that date until February 23rd to design, construct, program, and wire a functioning robot capable of both autonomous code and remote control. This year’s competition animation can be found here by clicking here.
After countless hours in the evenings and on Saturdays, the SVGS robot was completed and bagged up until competition! It features a tank tread drive system, a webcam for live video streaming back to the controller computer, a gate for trapping the ball, a pneumatic launcher for releasing the ball into the opposing team’s tower, and two-motor arm for manipulating outer defenses.
Shenandoah Valley Governor's School 