Competing Across Missouri

Francis Howell North’s Robotics team was formed into an alliance with Francis Howell Central and Francis Howell for their Kansas City regional competition on March 12-14. Days later, they had their St. Louis competition, hosted at SLU, on March 19-21. Each school has one robot to use in the competition with each team having three robots. Each robot weighs somewhere around 120 pounds. The goal is to use the robots to stack up a tower with six crates, with a trash can on top. Each school has approximately six weeks to build their robot.

“There are several motor ports on our central processing system,” junior Alex Warhover said. “We use python code to send commands through the wires to different motors to do different things.”

The Francis Howell Robotics teams placed 29 out of 50 at the Kansas city regional competition. They then improved the next weekend at the St. Louis competition. In this competition, the team made it to semi-finals.

“Kansas City was more of a practice competition for us,” senior Corey Plattenburg said. “We weren’t too upset about the Kansas City competition because we still had St. Louis.” (brief by alex brice)

DECA Heads to Internationals

Over spring break, approximately 20 DECA members went to State in the Lake of the Ozarks. Out of the 20 that went, 10 are now eligible to go to Internationals.

“I’ve heard the Canadians are pretty good,” junior David Hood said. “So it’ll be interesting to see what they are like.”

At State, DECA members are judged on how well they present different items. They pretend they are businessmen and women who have different ideas for prospective business. The “businesses” they present to are judges who grade them on their performance.

“If I hadn’t joined DECA, I wouldn’t have the experiences that I currently have in the business world,” Hood said.

Internationals will begin April 18 in Orlando. (brief by chase meyer)

FBLA Takes on the Big Apple

From March 8-11, students from FBLA took a trip to New York City. The students combined with the FBLA club at FHHS for a total of about 40 members on the trip.

“We got to go as a group to have an experience in a place that has a lot of business opportunities,” FBLA President Elise Gertsch said. “I think, if anything, it was important to see what the atmosphere was like and open up interest.”

The club’s next major event will be the State competition in Springfield, MO from April 12-14. The club had 17 people qualify in Districts to move to the next level, and members will compete in events ranging from public speaking to website design.

“This year, we have twice as many people who qualified as last year,” Gertsch said. “It’ll be a lot of fun for people to go and experience the time there.” (brief by daniel bodden)