F.I.R.S.T. Robotics at Luray
High School
Luray High School opened
its doors in the Fall of 2009. Page
County built two new schools in the county with the older buildings becoming
middle schools. The summer of 2009 Ron
Vickers (a newly hired Technology Education teacher) attended JMU Content
Academy in the Robotics concentration.
At this time the robotics program at LHS was begun with grant money from
JMU’s Nick Swayne. He sponsored over 5
different FRC teams to increase the First Lego Teams already I n place in the
Shenandoah Valley.
Thru a
small group of excited students the first ever Luray Robodawgs Team #3307
successfully designed, built and competed with a robot made by them. Leas mentor, Ron Vickers was able to recruit
the chemistry teacher to help. Mr. Kevin
Carini brought a different set of interested students and we grew from this
point. This Rookie Year was sponsored by
grant funding from JMU for the required $6,000.00 . The team went to the Chesapeake Regional in
Baltimore Maryland. They won the “Rookie
Inspiration Award” for their efforts.
In 2010-2011 our 2nd Season we grew to over
20 some students helping out. We started
getting interest from the Art, Business, Math, and Science departments. Again this year we went to the Chesapeake
Regionals. Mr. Carini’s wife was having
her first child the competition weekend and could not go with us. Alas our robots had trouble moving the vinyl
pool rings to the scoring rack, but all students involved remained highly
motivated. Students remained involved
off season to keep learning. The JMU
grant of $5,000 paid the kit of parts and registration. Luray Caverns sponsored the lodging costs for
the students. Several other local businesses
donated smaller amounts that went into materials and supplies not included in
the kit. This included the parts to
create a smaller climbing robot for that year’s challenge
Team #3307 worked throughout the off season trying to
improve our chances at competitions. We
again were funded by grant from JMU for $5,000 and local business sponsors for
much smaller amounts for our 3rd season. The challenge that year was to shoot foam
basketball into asset of rims. We found
shooting a ball is much easier than picking one up off the playing
surface. Our robot was vey adept at making
goals on our home practice field and did preform in Baltimore. By know the FIRST robotics program at Luray
High was firmly established to attract some of the brightest students in the
school seeking to get accepted into engineering schools. After consecutive JMU content teaching academies
the mentors were much better trained and Kevin Carini developed a dual enrolled
class with JMU in Robotics. This initial
class had 8 students enrolled. This year
the expectations and content was developed.
Last school year Mr. Carini left Luray to teach at
another school and his replacement chemistry teacher agreed to chaperone the
team on trips. Our lead mentor, Mr. Vickers taught the JMU dual
enrolled robotics class in the spring to continue strong growth in robotics to
include the FTC challenge, Arduino coding and FRC design. After Mr. Vickers attended his content area
teacher conference VTEEA, a grant to start up a FTC team was done. Rockwell/Collins awarded us with a $1,000.00
grant to purchase the erector type parts for the FTC robot that we can use over
and over. The idea was to recruit middle
school teachers to mentor this team to provide a “junior varsity” team of sorts
to improve students starting into FRC.
Freshmen (9th graders) were encouraged to be on this team of
10. Alas a mentor could not be found and
Ron Vickers started Team #6140. More
information about FTC is found http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/game . This season
goes from late summer to December enabled the FRC team starting 1st
Saturday in January to not be in conflict.
The FRTC team competed and this 4th season developed a
student population that had remained with the teams for their entire high school
career. Student in the robotics class
have all selected technology careers with many of them being accepted into
Virginia Tech’s engineering school.
Funding for this season was again thru JMU grant of $5,000.00. Luray Caverns again sponsored the student
motel costs.
This last season the
students worked on marketing and branding the team better. We now have our own Bulldog mascot image,
banner, and other colored coded items.
Wrangle Jeanswear has sponsored the T-shirt cost the past couple of
seasons so your team can be dresses appropriately during the season. Sponsoring the robotics efforts at Luray High
has remained a challenge each year.
Without the grant funding from JMU the programs would never have been
possible. Notification was received during
the summer a grant for next year (2013-2014) was not obtained. Mentors and student team members are at a
loss. We feel like local sponsorships
will not be adequate to field a team this school year.
We invite you to look at
the team webpage http://www.lhs-first.ning.com . Please
contact our lead mentor for more information.
All sponsors are given
recognition as much as we can on the T-shirts, robot itself, and local
publications. The school will provide a
donation letter for tax purposes. Hope
to hear from you!
Luray High School
Ron Vickers, Technology
Education Teacher
Mentoring: FRC Team #3307 and FTC Team# 6140 Luray
Robodawgs.
243 Bulldog Dr.
Luray, VA 22835
(office) (540) 743-3800
Vickers cell (540) 860-2807
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