On Saturday, January 5th, the FIRST world will be kicking off the start of the FRC build season. This year, Saints Robotics will be traveling to Auburn High School to watch the release of the FRC prompt, alongside the rest of the world. Afterwards, the team will return to Interlake for a brainstorming session, so that we can start preparing for competition!

Over the holiday break, Saints Robotics will still be working hard! All members are invited to participate in the Helping Hounds program, which will be volunteering at Northwest Harvest, a local organization that packages food for families in need. This is Interlake’s 3rd year attending; last year we packaged 8,700 pounds of food for families in need, and we hope to break that record this year! We will be visiting Northwest Harvest on Saturday, December 22, 2012. Support your community and Saints!

Saints Robotics members are invited to attend the Bellevue FLL Regional Qualifier held this year December 8-9 at Bellevue College. This year, Interlake is mentoring eight FLL teams who will be competing at the Bellevue Regional, alongside two now-independent teams started up by Saints Robotics. This is a great opportunity for Saints Robotics members to help the FIRST community. Anyone interested is invited to attend, with more information at http://www.firstwa.org/FLL/StateQualifiers/Bellevue.aspx

The third annual Interlake Saints Robotics Pasta Dinner Auction and Fundraiser was a great success! All families of Saints Robotics members or people interested in FIRST were invited to attend, with tech representatives from the local UW attending as well. This pasta dinner offered delicious pasta, as well as several gift cards, desserts, and other in-kind items donated from various local businesses. The team was able to raise over $1700 for the upcoming build season! Thank you for supporting your Saints!

In order to learn, expand, and develop on programming and mechanical skills, Saints Robotics members were invited to attend workshops held at Digipen, a local technical institute, on November 10th. Digipen was a great opportunity to broaden knowledge on robotics skills, especially in preparation of the upcoming build season.

The Intel Labs at the University of Washington invited Saints Robotics members to attend workshops November 2nd and 9th. Students were offered a private tour of the Intel Labs by PhD students Cynthia Matuszek and Peter Henry. Robotics members were invited to experience a way that the STEM skills they learn in Robotics could be applied in the real world. Partnerships with the community are a valuable resource that Saints Robotics area able to take advantage of.

Interlake Saints Robotics participated in a demonstration at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue Square on October 20th, 2012. Robotics members had the opportunity to explore the new technology inside the Microsoft Store as at team, as well as introduce store-goers to the world of FIRST. Saints Robotics demonstrated its robot “The Rhino,” from the 2011 game, Rebound Rumble, showed videos advertising the team and FIRST as a whole, and put interested families into contact with FIRST representatives and local FLL teams.

As this season comes to a close, we thank all those who have supported and sponsored us. Without you, we could never have gotten to the point we have reached. We are very proud of our successes this year, winning the first entrepreneurship award at the Spokane Regional FIRST Competition, as well as qualifying for quarter finals at that competition, as well as making semi-finals at the Seattle Regional competition. Once again, we thank you sincerely.
That being said, we’re already hard at work preparing for next year’s competition. Despite our season technically being hiatus because of many of our members taking high school exams, our diligent workers are still working on and off this season. We plan to build off this season’s victories, and take it to a new level next year! Thank you for you for your continued support.

This year at the FIRST Spokane Regionals, qualified for quarter finals! Not only did we pull off that spectacular success, but our public relations team won the entrepreneurship award! This award was the first one given out at the Spokane Regionals. Congratulations to our spectacular team. Go Saints!

Our robotics competition is currently featured on the Bellevue School District website. The article, titled Bellevue High Schools at FIRST Robotics Competition, mentions that our team participated in the recent FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Seattle Olympic regional competition.

From the article:

Teams from Bellevue High, Newport High, Interlake High and Sammamish High were also among the nearly 100 teams competing in what is one of the largest robotic [sic] competitions in the world. Four of the five Bellevue teams advanced to the regional playoff matches.