Students from around Central Washington will compete for the first time at Wenatchee Valley High School Robotic Challenge at the Wenatchee Valley Mall on Nov. 16.

The competition will take place from noon to 5 p.m. and is put on by the Computer Technology and Robotics class at Wenatchee Valley Technical Skills Center. According to Technology instructor Don Shennum, about 20 teams of two to four individuals will be competing from schools in Wenatchee, Leavenworth, Entiat, Quincy, Moses Lake, Warden, and Richland.

Wenatchee will be represented with three teams made up of two students from Wenatchee, three from Eastmont, and one from Entiat. Junior Ian Hull and senior Jacob Baldwin, both from Wenatchee, will make up one of the teams. Though Hull said he likes competing at more advanced events, he still enjoyed preparing for this local event and looks forward to participate.

“You get to build something with your own hands, and if it works, it’s pretty amazing,” said Hull. “Nothing is quite like it.”

This event is a preview to two statewide competitions later this year, the first occurring on Dec. 7 at Zillah High School. The teams turning out for the Wenatchee event are expected to attend State as well. Shennum said that it was at this state competition the previous year that he got the idea to host an event in Wenatchee.

“[I thought] why not do one in our neck of the woods instead of driving for three hours?” he said. “[The idea is] let’s get together and compare our projects and compete.”

Students will compete with the Parallax Boe-bots they have designed, assembled, and programmed from kits for the event. Shennum said his students worked on them as a three- week project for class, and he is taking the teams with the top robots to the competition.

The students will test their robots in three contests, a 10-foot by 4-foot simple maze, a more difficult 10-by-4 maze, and sumo wrestling. He said there will be winners for each contest, but no overall winner because the focus of this competition is to compare designs and make improvements for state rather than winning.

According to Shennum, Wenatchee’s teams placed in the middle of the pack at last year’s statewide event.

“It’s nice to get better and better, but at the end of the day, that’s not what I’m worried about,” said Shennum. “My main goal is to give these programs recognition and to show the cool things we are doing.”