McMINNVILLE, Ore. – After competing in the FIRST Championship in Houston this past spring, a Yamhill County robotics team affiliated with the Oregon State University 4-H Youth Development Program visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
It was familiar territory for the NerdHerd team, which has a workshop in a former classroom at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, just steps away from space exploration exhibits.
But the FIRST Championship — an international youth robotics competition organized by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) — was eye-opening to Jacob Wojcik, NerdHerd’s co-captain and lead programmer.
“It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Wojcik, a recent graduate of Newberg High School. “There were hundreds upon hundreds of teams from across the world in a massive venue.”
Indeed, a little over 600 teams from around the world advanced at the event, held over four days in mid-April. Competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition, NerdHerd was in the Curie division with a robot they named Notezart.
The team was ranked 25th after two days of qualifying matches. On the third day came the “alliance” selection to set the eight teams who would compete in the playoffs and finals within the division. NerdHerd was one of the three teams Alpha Bots from Michigan selected for the alliance.
The alliance went 1-2 in the playoffs and was knocked out in the third round.
“We’re a pretty small team, with 12 students,” Wojcik said. “We have a smallish shop, yet we made it pretty far.”
Finishing in the top third of the FIRST Robotics Competition “was a great success,” said Jessica Johnson, who is NerdHerd’s No. 2 lead coach. Brian Lee is the No. 1 lead coach.
“We built a really good robot that was fairly reliable,” Johnson said, adding that another key to the team’s success was “keeping it simple. Going for what we knew we could do.”
From high school to 4-H
The history of youth robotics in Yamhill County goes back to 2011, when a FIRST Robotics Competition team started at McMinnville High School’s Engineering and Aerospace Sciences Academy. The next year, NerdHerd competed at the FIRST Championship in St. Louis. Del Smith, founder of the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, flew the team to the competition in his private jet.
In 2017, NerdHerd transitioned from a high school-based team to 4-H, which allowed it to draw on team members from across the county. Since then, NerdHerd has had an influx of students from Newberg, including Wojcik.
“I’ve been interested in robotics for the majority of my life,” he said. “When I was in eighth grade there was a robotics team at Newberg High School. I was on that team but during COVID it kind of fell apart. I had heard about NerdHerd through some other people and joined in my sophomore year.”
As lead programmer, Wojcik writes code that moves the robot across the field for the 15 seconds of the match. It can pick up points depending on Wojcik’s code. After the first 15 seconds a “driver’ directs the robot around the field.
“I’ve learned a lot about 4-H from presenting with other 4-H groups at our county fair,” Wojcik said.
Wojcik will attend OSU in the fall, where he will study physics and chemistry.
Johnson has been coaching NerdHerd for about a decade, when her son was on the team at McMinnville High. She helped guide the team through its transition from a high school to 4-H club.
“4-H was welcoming and accommodating and a great program,” she said.
Johnson said one of the appeals of being a 4-H team is that the club is out in the community raising awareness about robotics.
“It’s not just about building the robot,” she said. “We do presentations. We recruit. We need to get younger kids engaged and interested so when they get older, they come looking for us.”
