MOUNTLAKE TERRACE—The Mountlake Terrace High School robotics team, Chill Out, returned from the World Championship in Houston, Sunday, April 27, ranking in 16th in the world out of 3,700 teams – the top 1 percent. Its robot, SubZero, was also voted the number 12 fan-favorite robot globally for its innovative design and smooth, precise control.
Chill Out also secured a top five slot in its human-operated performance. One of the teams Chill Out competed against ended up going on to win a World Championship title – fellow Snohomish County team and practice partners, Jack in the Bot, from Jackson High School in Mill Creek.
Chill Out competes through an organization called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and technology) Robotics, a not-for-profit organization that prepares young people for the future through its youth robotics programs.
The FIRST Robotics Global Competition was held in Houston, Texas, from April 16 to April 19 and pitted teams against each other to design, construct, and program a robot from the ground up to carry out a specific task. This year’s challenge was creating a machine that could pick up a kickball and score it into an oversized net.
The event ran for three days, all day from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m., and packed the George R. Brown Convention Center with approximately 50,000 attendees.
One of Chill Out’s coaches, Steve Winckler, joined the robotics team when his son, Eli, a sophomore at the time, returned home from soccer practice and said he didn’t think it was for him…So he joined the robotics team instead.
Flashforward a couple months later and the Winckler family are entering their first robotics competition in Snohomish which, Winckler explained, was packed “floor to ceiling” with screaming kids.
“I was just blown away by the energy and this whole other dimension,” said Winckler. “I describe it as the biggest thing you’ve never heard of.”
Winckler, who works in software engineering for AT&T, has taught Leadership at Washington State University, and has coached several soccer teams, thought that all these skillsets could be put to good use when a fellow student asked if he would be interested in mentoring their team.
That was 2022. Now Eli is in his last year in high school, as a Senior, but Winckler continues to keep coaching.
“I see these younger students who are freshmen, or maybe Sophomores, and I want to see their story. I’m not prepared to leave because I see some real potential and I want to see what they can do with their next two years because I saw, firsthand, how it changed my son’s life – from confidence, to speaking in front of large groups, to the knowledge he has about engineering, and physics, to leadership, and positive outlook when things don’t get your way but you have to fight through it,” said Winckler.
Though Winckler technically ‘coaches’ the Mountlake Terrace High-based Chill Out team, he prefers the title “mentor,” because he said the team is mostly student-lead, from design, to programming, to construction, to testing, to competing.
“The mentors don’t touch the code, we don’t tend to touch the robot, we don’t touch the CAD software. We’re just there to ask questions, we help them prioritize, we might help them with schedule management, we might ask them questions about the design like – hey that part might look like it would be difficult to repair, so we kind of nudge them around but the students do all of it,” said Winckler.
And the robotics teams do it all in just eight weeks. Students even undertake the graphic design, and media management, of the team through a separate sub-division.
Though Chill Out is home based out of Mountlake Terrace High School the team is open to all high school aged kids enrolled in the Edmonds School District. Interested students can get involved with absolutely zero experience or expertise, Winkler said.
Chill Out competes within the Pacific Northwest region which has about 140 teams across Washington State. Through the month of March all the teams throughout Washington and Oregon compete in events, and qualifying events, culminating in a regional Championship.
Based on performances here, the top 20 teams in the Pacific Northwest are selected to compete in the World Championships which features robotics teams from around the world – from Mexico, to Brazil, to Israel, to Australia, and beyond – It was during this regional competition when Chill Out was a finalist, landing a gold ticket to the global competition in Houston this year.
Chill Out was recently featured on The Newsfeed with Cascade PBS, highlighting the incredible work of these students. The team creates a new robot every year to meet the FIRST game challenge. Along with robot engineering, the students run a business, including community STEM outreach, marketing, fundraising, graphic design, and public speaking.
This season Chill Out has earned two District Event Winner blue banners, the Innovation in Control Award, the Autonomous Award, and District Championship Finalist. The team has a record of 46-7-0 and are ranked 14th worldwide out of almost 3,700 teams.
Other local teams that competed at the FIRST Robotics competition included Royal Robotics 2522 (Lynnwood High School), Jack in the Bot 2910 (Henry M Jackson High School), Sonic Squirrels 2930 (Glacier Peak and Snohomish high schools), and Arrowdynamics 10079 (Bothell High School).
Author: Kienan Briscoe
2 Responses
I think it’s a bit tacky that you neglected to mention that one of those other PNW teams, Jack in the Bot, actually won the competition.
I’m all for supporting your local team, but when another team – based just a few miles away – does something incredible, not mentioning it even in passing feels like sour grapes.
And no, I am not in any way connected to that team. My son is on a different local team (Nathan Hale Roboraiders). I can still appreciate their very impressive achievement, just like I appreciate Chill Out’s, and just like I appreciate and support my son’s team, that didn’t make it to the championship but worked incredibly hard and did as well as they could.
Hi Gideon, check the second paragraph. Thanks.