Since 2022, the Rochester High School SkillsUSA Robotics and Drone Club has gone to the SkillsUSA National Leadership & Skills Conference each year, winning first place in 2022 and second in 2023 and 2024.

Now, Rochester High School junior and club president Zach Hubbard is leading his classmates as they prepare to try to make it back to the SkillsUSA nationals and go for gold again.

But before that can happen, the club teams must make their way through the SkillsUSA regional and state level competitions.

Regionals come first and are scheduled shortly after the winter break ends. Rochester High School is hosting the regional competition, scheduled for Jan. 18, 2025.

So far, the club has five separate robots and two drones, each piloted by a team, which will be competing against machines made by other SkillsUSA clubs at neighboring schools in mock bomb removal exercises for the robots and obstacle courses for the drones.

Team members are responsible for designing their robots or drones entirely from scratch, including making design blueprints and programming in commands to be able to control their machines.

Even though they have their robots and drones constructed and operational, there is still work to be done before regionals, according to Hunter Robinette, a senior member of the Rochester High School SkillsUSA club.

“We’re gonna get caught up a lot more after winter break. We are in kind of like a crunch mode. We had a bit of a slow start,” Robinette said. “But the robot’s going really well. We’ve done a few tests with it.”

One part of the national competition mock bomb disposal course includes having to navigate a debris field with the robot, and they are planning on trying a 4-wheel drive upgrade on their robot to increase their chances of winning.

“With all the stuff we’ve learned, our chances increase every year,” Robinette added.

Hubbard stated that despite preparing for the national competition already as they’ve been there a lot recently, they still intend on taking both the upcoming regional and state competitions seriously as the number of competing teams keeps increasing every year.

Other high schools sending teams to compete in the upcoming regional competition include Aberdeen, Elma, Hoquiam, Oak Harbor, Montesano and several others.

“Regionals isn’t the big competition, but it’s still one of the steps you have to take. It’s performance. You want to perform the exact same way you do there as you would at nationals,” Hubbard said. “... Realizing how close it is kind of scares me a little bit, but I’m like, ‘We’ve got this. We’ve got this. We’ve done this before.’”

After winning both the regional and state competitions in 2023, the club experienced a major setback as before they could go on to compete in nationals, the truck they had traveled to the state competition in was stolen, along with all of their robots and drones and associated documentation, an estimated value of $10,000.

The truck was eventually recovered, but the robotics equipment and documentation inside the truck were never found.

Part of SkillsUSA competitions include not just demonstrations of a robot or drone’s abilities, but a presentation given by the students who built it along with their notebooks and documentation on their machines to show their work.

In 2023, the students were lucky enough to not only build entirely new robots and drones for the national competition, but redid their notes and blueprints and eventually took second place at nationals.

Despite overcoming the theft of their equipment, Rochester High School SkillsUSA Robotics and Drone Club advisor Paul Kuss stated they now have safeguards should another theft occur, especially when it comes to the notebooks and documentation of the students’ work.

“We do electronic backups now for sure and, more importantly, we never leave anything in the vehicle overnight again,” Kuss said.

Following the upcoming regional competition, the state-level SkillsUSA competition will be held in Tacoma in March, before nationals over the summer.

Kuss added that along with the robotics and drone club, Rochester High School also has SkillsUSA American sign language and welding clubs.

Also, to help pay for travel and lodging costs for the upcoming SkillsUSA state competition, Kuss mentioned they are working with the Chehalis Applebee’s Grill and Bar for a fundraising breakfast morning coming up on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025.

“The kids will be selling breakfast tickets for that, but also, you can come directly to the Chehalis Applebee’s directly and buy tickets there,” Kuss said.

The restaurant splits proceeds from the fundraiser with the club.

“It basically pays for the kids’ trip to state,” Kuss added.

In Chehalis, Applebee’s is located at 1670 NW Louisiana Ave.

SkillsUSA is a national nonprofit student organization committed to fostering students to prepare them for the professional world along with teaching them leadership and trade skills.

Each year, the SkillsUSA National Leadership & Skills Conference is held in Atlanta, Georgia, and features more than 6,500 state champion students competing in 114 different various skill and leadership competitions, according to the SkillsUSA website.

For more information, visit https://www.skillsusa.org/.