Shortly after I published my story about Tacoma School of the Arts’ robotics team’s trip to the national tournament, I received an e-mail from Sheri Ahlheim. She’s a math teacher at Peninsula High School in Gig Harbor. The school had a team in Botball, another robotics league.

The team was about to travel to the University of Santa Clara to compete in the Northern California regional tournament. I asked her to e-mail me an update when she got back, and here it is:

Traveling is tough! Getting the robots through security was an issue (but not as much of one as the couple with baby formula in front of us…), and somewhere along the way a sonar sensor was dislodged.

We placed 9th of 27 teams in the seeding round, 13th in the double elimination (the sonar fell off and we were never able to recalibrate it), and 6th in documentation, giving us an overall 11th place finish. Not bad for our second year! And we received Judges’ Choice awards for best on-site presentation, and best sportsmanship.

Lots of fun, and lots of learning! The kids are already plotting strategies for next year…