VAN WERT, OH (WLIO) - For the 7th year, Van Wert High School hosted two dozen teams of students from around the state to compete in a robotics competition.
The Northwest Ohio FIRST Tech Challenge is a competition where teams of high school students begin working in September to build a robot to complete a different task each year.
Van Wert High School has been teaching robotics for 12 years and hosting the tournament for 7 years. Participating in the tournament teaches the kids how to be effective communicators and collaborate with others, and many of the students involved use the experience as a starting point for a career in STEM fields.
"We have students that have been in our engineering program or our robotics program all over the country, from Colorado to Minnesota, Florida, to Texas, and they're engineers in aerospace, and civil, and mechanical, and electrical. Now we've been doing this long enough, these kids are coming back as adults and saying 'Yeah, absolutely the problem-solving skills I learned, and how to collaborate with other people has really paid off,'" said Bob Spath, the robotics coach for Van Wert High School and director of the regional tournament.
One student on the Van Wert robotics team, senior Abbie Mengerink, plans to use what she's learned from building robots to pursue a career in medical laboratory science.
"Through the program I've honestly just learned so much, like, there's so many skills and you learn how to use a lot of machines and I just think that the technology you use really helps and, in the future, I think I can use it down the road," she said.
The FIRST Tech Challenge State Championship will be held in March. The results of today's tournament can be found here:
USOHVWQ FTC Event Web : Event Information (firstinspires.org)
