The Greeley West Robotics team held its annual robotics tournament on January 17. They hosted 38 teams from 13 different high schools as they competed throughout the day. They placed 11th at this tournament, but won the innovate award for the first time ever at a tournament hosted by Greeley West, and for the second time ever in the history of Robotics at Greeley. 

Christina Hirsch is a junior at West and has been a part of robotics all three years. She was very happy with their performance at this tournament saying, “Overall it was the best a Greeley West team has ever done at tournament.” 

Senior at Greeley West and senior member of the robotics team, Calvin Long, agreed with Hirsch’s sentiment saying that, “This is the best we’ve performed all year, and the fun thing about robotics is that to compete really well you need a good notebook. If the notebook isn’t good then you’re missing something and your robot will fall short.”

As a program the robotics team has taken a large step forward from last year already winning three awards on the season and earning an exclusive invitation to a large robotics tournament in Iowa and members have their sights set on state and eventually world championships.

An important aspect of robotics that won the robotics team their award in notebooking is keeping track of their process in a slides show containing 450 pages. Teacher at Greeley West, as well as robotics coach and sponsor, Mr. Tristen Vanguilder said, “ It’s an engineering design process about all the aspects that go into building their robot.”

 Vanguilder also expressed how happy he was with how the tournament ran and thanked all the student and teacher volunteers that made it possible.