By Nancy Edwards
Students belonging to a new club at FHS are learning and using interpersonal and on-the-job skills that have launched their success to compete at a world competition later this month.
FIRST Robotics Competition Team 5010: Tiger Dynasty, is the brainchild of Elizabeth Butterfield, 18, a senior at FHS. Butterfield wanted to form a club focused on engineering, science and technology outside the classroom.
In late 2012, Butterfield began the Fishers High School Robotics Club, which eventually became a FIRST Robotics Competition team. FIRST is an acronym: For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
the FRC Team 5010 was founded by Butterfield during the summer 2013. She is also a team leader joined by; Ryusuke Saito, vice president; and Ryan Sharkey, technical lead; along with Dillan Nayee, John Mross, Connor Rudmann, Matteo Polito, and Jake White, who are all current juniors and seniors.
Students that are part of the team are also developing skills in mathematics, marketing and design, while developing leadership and communication skills that will help them as they move to the collegiate level and into their professional lives.
“We deal with problems and obstacles and decision-making,” Butterfield said. “We work with and learn how to communicate with professionals.”
In addition, the students work along with mentors: professionals that guide them as the team constructs a robot. Each year, the team designs a new robot and participates in competitions nationally and abroad. Teams have just six weeks to design, construct and test their robots before competing.
“Making a robot from scratch in a very short amount of time is a challenge,” Ryan Sharkey, 18, technical lead for Tiger Dynasty, said. “Our team acts like an engineering firm: we have tight deadlines with strict criteria. The experience is stressful but rewarding.”
The club first began training last summer with FRC Team 868 (the Carmel TechHOUNDS), which supported the Fishers team with basic training in skills needed to build a robot.
“Carmel helped us a lot,” Butterfield said. “Their students were eager to see everyone succeed.”
This display of teamwork, which the Fishers team also possesses, according to Butterfield, helped the Fishers team become a success. Since Tiger Dynasty’s inception, the team has competed locally, at the Brownsburg Precision Robotics Competition in Brownsburg, in addition to the CAGE Match Competition at Southport High School in Indianapolis, placing ninth out of 31 teams.
Most recently, the team participated at the Boilermaker Regional at Purdue University, winning awards for First Year Rookie and Rookie All-Star. The awards qualified Fishers to compete at the FIRST World Championship April 23-26 in St. Louis.
Fishers Team 5010: Tiger Dynasty needs $15,000 in funding to participate in the upcoming world competition. To donate, please go to www.gofundme.com/tigerdynasty. For more information about the team, go to http://tigerdynasty.org/about5010/.
