Robotics team energized for 17th season

As the Bonners Ferry High School robotics team First Team Alpha Plus enters their 17th season, they are more excited than ever to head down to Nampa and compete against their robotics friends from across the state.

Since our first kickoff in 2007, Alpha+ has made some amazing strides, and we have our dedicated mentors to thank for that. Many of our current mentors have been with us since the beginning of the team, and we wouldn’t be here if it wasn't for our mentor, sponsor and community support. During the fall of 2022, Alpha+ opened our shop to students and community members interested in the many different aspects of our team. With the leadership of our talented mentors, we were able to hold a welding, 3-D design, grant writing and CNCing workshop.

Through these workshops, we got to introduce new concepts and skills to the new eighth graders who didn’t have their interests lined out yet. We’ve seen great results as we now have many eighth graders building their skills and we look forward to seeing where they go next season.

On Jan. 9, FIRST Team 2130 Alpha+ kicked off the 2023 season in our shop. We had many previous members come back to talk with us, and share their ideas while we discussed the game. The shop was lively as everyone was more than willing to discuss the game with the senior members.

In CHARGED UP, presented by Haas, two competing alliances process game pieces to bring energy to their community. Each alliance brings energy to their community by retrieving their cones and cubes from substations and scoring them into the grid. For the first 15 seconds, teams can score a game piece, dock on their charging stations, retrieve game pieces, or just leave the starting area to earn points, which are worth more in those first few seconds. Human players provide the game pieces to the robots from the substations. In the final moments of each match, alliance robots race to dock or engage with their charge station!

Even though we learned an almost intimidating amount about the game at Kickoff, we still have a lot to do. In just three short months we must brainstorm, strategize, prototype, fabricate, assemble and program this year’s robot! We hope our very supportive community will keep up with our progress through future articles and our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/FirstTeam2130