2013: Benevolence

Benevolence was our 2013 robot for the game Ultimate Ascent. With Benevolence, we first competed at the Autodesk Oregon Regional in Portland, Oregon, where we placed sixth. At that competition, our lead mentor, Ed Katz, won the Woodie Flowers Award. We also competed at the Spokane Regional in Cheney, Washington, where we ranked first. We also won the Engineering Inspiration Award, enabling us to compete at the FRC World Championship in St. Louis, Missouri in the Curie Division where we ranked 40th.

Before we went to St. Louis, Paul Bonnell, an English teacher at Bonners Ferry High School, wrote this poem as a send off:

National Poem 72.61

Somewhere inside the grinding bones of my cranium,
I sense the transition in the clicking of transistors,
The benevolent shift of perspective,
The flowering of Geranium,
The exaltation of something as noble as Argon.
I wing a frisbee far across the far pavilion,
to Portland, Oregon and the Rose Garden.
I toss, fetch and lift launch,
to hours of programming, and drilling, and writing,
and thinking, and texting, scouting, strategizing, presenting,
and dreaming.
May your alliance be strong,
May Benevolence shine above you,
Team 2130

~Paul Bonnell