Shorewood Robotics Team Places Sixth in Oregon Regional

The Shorewood High School Robotics team isn’t just about making a robot, it is about making a difference in students' lives.

“Robotics shows kids a wide variety of people in the world and lets them experience things they never thought they would do,” said Wes Proudlove, Shorewood High School industrial technology teacher and the robotics team adviser.

The Shorewood High School Robotics team called Team Pronto started three years ago and is made up of 22 students.  

“Originally, the principal handed me a DVD of a first robotics event, I watched it and I said it is cool but I don’t have time to do it,” Proudlove said.  

A few students who were interested in having a robotics team walked into Proudlove’s classroom and started talking to him about starting a team. He agreed to be the adviser and has been dedicated ever since.  

“My heart is in this 100 percent and I put in 1,000 hours a year of uncompensated time,” Proudlove said. “If we (Proudlove and other mentors) didn’t believe in this so much we wouldn’t do this.” 

Last weekend, Proudlove took a day off of work to drive the team’s robot to Portland for the Autodesk Oregon Regional competition.

There were 58 teams that competed in the competition and Team Pronto ranked sixth.

On March 18-19, Team Pronto competed in The FIRST FRC Seattle Regional at Qwest Event Center. Team Pronto ranked 42, but then the seventh place team chose them to pair up with, which bumped their ranking to seventh place, said Proudlove. 

“Competitions are important but it is really about the lessons you learned getting there and the skills you develop when making the robot,” said Nathan Gibbons, Team Pronto co-president and Shorewood senior.

Each year the design of the competition changes and the students have six weeks to build a robot from scratch. Within the six weeks the students spend eight hours a day except Sundays building the robot.

“It is definitely a collaborative and a family type setting,” said Gibbons.  

During the six weeks, engineers from Microsoft and Boeing as well as science technology or mathematic students from the University of Washington help the students with the design of their robot.

“The mentors give us feedback, help up learn about parts of the robot and support us in what we are doing,” said Craig Rogers, Team Pronto co-president and Shorewood senior.  

After the six weeks the team packs up its robot because members can no longer work on it.

But the club doesn’t end after the six weeks; it is actually year round. Students fundraise and do community service. They also take their robot to middle schools and other school to get students interested in robotics, Proudlove said.