Woodside High robotics team shines, heads for national contest Woodside High robotics team shines, heads for national contest (April 03, 2002)

The Woodside High School robotics team advanced as far as the semi-finals and won the award for the most spirited team at the FIRST robotics regional competition held at San Jose State over the weekend.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) is a national robotics competition that pits teams of high school students and their machines against one another.

The competition this year required two teams to form an alliance and cooperate in a timed event in which robots gathered soccer balls, loaded them into rolling boxes and placed the boxes in scoring zones to win points. Teams had six weeks to design, build and test their robots.

In addition to making it to the semi-finals, Woodside's robot was part of the alliance that achieved the highest number of points, team captain Stephanie Lee said. Woodside will participate in the national championship event from April 25 to 27 at the Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida.