New Competitors in the Ring: HHS Robotics Intensely Compete to Qualify for State

Courtesy+of+Coach+Henk

Courtesy of Coach Henk

By Kyle Abruzzo

 

Huntley High School’s Robotics team has recently qualified for state. There are eight different robotics teams all here at HHS. The teams are organized by letters. Starting from Team A all the way to Team H.

The two qualifying teams are Team B and H. Team B consists of Garrett Anderson, Ian Faber, Josh Hontanosas, John Kerin, Nathan Logston, Joey Perreault, Josh Simpson, and Brad Walz. Team H consists of Joey Case, Ryan Kruesel, Clarissa Mason, Alex O’Connell, Josh Quezada, Shefali Sharma, Tanvi Shingade, and Joey Skarbonkewicz.

Team B qualified for State by winning the Excellence Award (top all around) at the Huntley VEX Tournament on 12/15. Team H qualified for State by winning the Design Award (best execution of the engineering design process) at the Rich East HS VEX Tournament on 11/10.

Coaches Henk and Zietlow could not be more proud of their two teams that qualified for state.

“We’re super proud of them. They have grown a lot over the past couple years. Last year we were very close to having one of our teams make it to state so we are super thrilled to have two out of our eight teams going,” Henk said.

Both coaches have given numerous amounts of support to every person on each team. team. But in the end, it is really up to the students as to how they perform.

“This is super important to me, the kids have done an amazing job and it is really fun for me,” Henk said. Not only does this mean a lot to the kids, but it also means a lot to the coaches too.

Members of these teams are very thrilled to be in the position they are in. “It’s really crazy, I am still trying to wrap my head around it. We are the first HHS Robotics teams to make state which is insane,” junior Alex O’Connell said.

“Getting this far is enough to push us to keep improving not only our Robotics team, but ourselves too,” O’Connell said.

This whole team is working very hard and they are improving every day. They are not looking to slow down at anytime.

These two State qualifying teams will head out to Niles West High School for the State Championship on Feb. 23.