By James Sanna, Southwest Minneapolis Patch

The machine clacked and hummed as it skittered back and forth across the floor, searching for inflatable circles, triangles to hang on a rack at one end of the small arena. Its wedge-like shape, bright orange and shiny metal frame, and plastic wheels suggested a prototype Mars rover, rather than something built by a gang of high school students.

Coming upon one of its targets, the angular beast reached out with a long, articulated appendage, snapping at the balloon with jaws mounted on it’s end like some space-faring aluminum plesiosaur. Grasping the shape and raising it high, the robot surged forward, trying to pin the re-purposed beach toy to a wall of horizontal pegs. Missing its first attempt, it backed up and readied for another charge, but it was too late: a buzzer sounded, announcing the round was up, and it was time to move on to a different challenge.

The robot may not have been able to put the last inflatable toy on the rack in time, but the fact that it was able to at all without any mechanical or software glitches is impressive. Its creators in Washbrun High School’s robotics club, the Millerbots, knocked the machine together in less than five months after receiving a kit containing its basic parts.

Built for a national robotics competition sponsored by FIRST, a non-profit founded by Segaway inventor Dean Kamen, the robot helped its creators place well in the first, regional round, according to Gabe Cole-Brant, one of the Millerbots manning the controls at Thursday’s State Fair demonstration.

“No-one expected us, the seventh-place alliance (each team is randomly paired with two others to operate with during the tournament) to beat the first place alliance at all,” said Cole-Brant.

Preparing for the competition, said Cole-Brant’s teammates Tyler Meister and Serena Sellars, involved long hours after school and on Saturdays researching, building, and testing.

Students even have to search out sponsorships from local corporations—just like a start-up firm would have to do, coach and physics teacher Peter Grul pointed out—to pay for specialty equipment that can give their creation a special edge.

“Build time is very stressful,” said Meister.

“You don’t have time to have the design in place before you have to start cutting aluminum,” added Grul.

There were 14 different scholarships awarded.  Some are one-time awards while others are renewable for up to four years.

The scholarships include:

• Concord Foundation Scholarship
• Fairview-Southdale Hospital Scholarship
• Knelman Scholarship
• Kopp Family Foundation Recognition Scholarship
• Lillian J. Lindsten Scholarship
• Minneapolis Public Schools Endowed Scholarship
• Minneapolis Association of Administrators and Consultants Scholarship
• Pearson Education Scholarship
• Regis Scholarship
• Richard R. Green Scholarship
• Ross and Doris Taylor Scholarship
• WHS Class of 1956 Scholarship
• WHS Class of 1959 Scholarship and the
• Washburn High School Foundation Scholarship

The recipients of these scholarships included:  Liban Ashkir, Stephen Carter, Yasir Hassan, Crystal Herrera, Tibyus Hill, Hailey Hollenbeck, Lewis Jones, Pa Nhia Khang, Peyton Lauber, Karen Opdahl, Jenny Ortiz, Stephanie Ortiz, Xuan Pham, Rebekah Polland, Max Pratt, Crystal Reyes, Dominic Rigert, Caleb Shepherd, Amanda Stone, Aleksandar Straumann, Shanice Sullivan, Guillermo Turcios, and Mai Vang.

And Congratulations go to Max Pratt who was selected as the recipient of the Washburn High School Foundation’s four-year renewable scholarship.  Max will be attending Missouri State University where he will not only embark on a challenging academic career, but he will also be a member of the Bears’ men’s swimming team.

Students from Washburn High School will compete at the international FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Championship in St. Louis, MO from April 27-30. The event will bring together 352 qualifying teams made up of 8,800 high school students from Australia, Canada, Israel, Mexico and the United States.

The Washburn Millerbots won the Minnesota Northstar Regional Robotics Competition to advance to the national competition.  This marks the Millerbots’ third regional win in the past four years.  The Millerbots created unique business partnerships in the community and forged a connection with the Minnesota High Tech Association.  Students on the robotics team were also engaged in an e-mentoring program with Target Corporation to develop leadership skills and awareness of IT careers.

The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) stages short games played by robots that are designed and built in six weeks from a common set of parts by a team of high-school-aged young people and a handful of engineer-mentors. The students program and remotely control the robots in competition rounds. Judges evaluate teams and present awards for design, technology, sportsmanship and commitment to FIRST. The competition season begins in early January and continues through April.

In the 2011 competition, LOGO MOTION, two alliances of three teams will compete on a 27-by-54-foot field with poles, attempting to earn points by hanging as many triangle, circle and square logo pieces as possible. Bonus points will be earned for each robot that can hang and assemble logo pieces to form the FIRST logo. Robots can also deploy Mini-Bots to climb vertical poles for a chance to earn additional points.

Click here for live streaming video of the competition. The competition begins at 1:00 pm (CDT) and will conclude on Saturday.  The Millerbots will be on the Archimedes field.  Washburn’s robot is bright orange and team number is 2549.

Congratulations to all members of the team and to their coaches Sara Etzel and Peter Grul who will be travelling with the team.  The 2011 Travelling Millerbots are:  Ethan Oscarson, Tyler Meister, Serena Sellars, Maddy Kersten, Matt Kinney, Steve Kinney, Mike Meyer, Gabe Cole-Brant, Georgeann Byrd, Nick Raap, and Conrad Etzel.

From Amy Cram Helwich (Executive Director, MN Urban Debate League)

On Sunday night we returned from the NAUDL (National Urban Debate League) national tournament in New York City, which brings the top two teams from 20 leagues from across the country for an incredibly competitive national tournament. A huge thank you to their coaches, Travis Neal, who did a fantastic job coaching them at the tournament, and to Lisa Jensen for her continual drive and unending support of the kids.

Our two teams from our league were from Washburn High School and South High School.  Washburn’s team was the incredibly talented duo of Brandon Bogan and Anna Parshall.  Brandon is a Junior, and Anna a Sophomore.  I am thrilled by their performance and excited that I will have them around next year to be leaders for the UDL.
Brandon and Anna went up against some of the toughest teams at the tournament, but they persevered and advanced beyond preliminary rounds, into trophy contention. They were an octo-finalist (meaning they were ranked 16th at the tournament). For those not familiar to the tournament structure – students with the top records in preliminary debate rounds, are able to advance for trophy contention into “out rounds” which determine trophy placement.  Octofinals to quarterfinals, to semifinals, to finals.

In addition to becoming an octo-finalist, Brandon Bogan also received a speaker award of 7th place (out of 80 students)! This is an incredible feat, as he was debating against some of the best students in the country.

In addition to their success, while we were in New York City, two other Washburn debaters, Jacarri Roberson and Micheala Boone, were representing the Urban Debate League at a convening for the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota.
Thank you again for all your support of the debate program at Washburn – what a thrilling year!

Many thanks to Greg Brinker of Fallon for putting so much effort into creating this awesome film about Washburn High School, it’s staff, students and community. It’s truly an amazing story about all the good things that are happening on West 50th street, and about all the good things to come. It’s about 18 minutes, but well worth your time. Click here if you would like to donate to our cause if you feel so inclined.