Robotics Team Goes to Regionals

By Catherine Cluett Pactol | Editor

Photo courtesy of Jeannine Rossa.

Molokai High’s Robotics team built their own robot over the past few months and last weekend, took it to the regional First Robotics Competition (FRC) organized by Hawaii First Robotics, a nonprofit that fosters STEM learning and competitions. Along with other Hawaii teams, the event, held at Oahu’s Stan Sherriff Arena, also hosted teams from Japan and Australia. 

Molokai teamed up with ‘Iolani and St. Louis high schools, an alliance that got them to the semifinals, according to ‘Iolani parent and Molokai resident Jeannine Rossa.

“Going into this event, we never actually got to test our hanging mechanism properly since we didn’t have the space to build the hanging bars,” posted Coach Edwin Mendija on social media. “Today was our first time using it and it turned out that we needed to reiterate it about three to four times to finally get it working correctly and consistently.”

Though they ended up losing to an alliance of Waialua, McKinley, and Yukikaze Technology of Japan, the team posted on social media that they “still had a blast.”

“We are also so grateful to have met and made friends with so many different teams! This experience will only make us better,” the team posted on the Molokai Robotics Facebook page. 

“We would like to thank our sponsors Bayer Hawaii, Maui Economic Development Board, and Friends of Hawaii Robotics for supporting us,” said Mendija.