Robotics and Engineering Club seek out new challenges
By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
The eTREC (East Troy Robotics and Engineering Club) robotics team will be competing in the FIRST FTC Wisconsin Qualifying tournament in Madison this weekend.
The all-day tournament runs from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 25, at James Madison Memorial High School, 201 S. Gammon Road, Madison.
The team, which consists of high-schoolers Meghan Griffin, Nik Prusinski, Joey Finch and Tim Zinniker have spend months building and preparing the robot “Borg” for competition.
The team named the robot after a race of being from the Star Trek franchise that assimilate humans and other races into their “collective” and alter them with cybernetic components. The Borg have a saying: “Resistance is futile.” The team hopes the competition heeds the warning.
“We have kind of a Star Trek theme going this year,” club mentor Tim Griffin said.
It’s their mission statement.”
eTREC Mission Statement reads: “Robotics: The final frontier. These are the voyages of team eTREC. Its four-year mission – to explore strange new materials; to seek out new teams and new alliances; to boldly go where no robotics team has gone before!”
If the team places in the qualifying tournament it will advance in the FIRST FTC State Tournament in Milwaukee the weekend of Feb. 7.
The team holds its meetings at East Troy High School from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesdays and from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.
For more information, contact Griffin at (262) 642-4458 or eTREC.FTC@gmail.com.
