Alta Vista High Competes in TECHALLENGE

Principal Bill Pierce finally got what he wanted – and for the first time in the history of the MVLA high school district, Alta Vista Continuation High School assembled a champion robotics team that then competed in the 17th annual engineering competition “TECHALLENGE” for students. It was held at The Tech Museum of Innovation on Saturday, April 24, 2004.  With more than 200 teams from 95 Bay Area schools entering the challenge, Alta Vista was originally just looking for an opportunity to show of some its talent and just participate – but just this did not happen.

The teams' task sounded so simple - to remove a blue plastic pike fish from a 60-gallon tank of water and place it in a circle on “the shore'' within three minutes. Unfortunately, this challenge parallels one that has stumped engineers for years, and for Alta Vista, it was just as tough.

So students, Robert Mear and Casey Blackketter assembled two teams of some of the finest students at Alta Vista to take on the challenge. These teams included Alta Vista High School students: Sarah Barnes, Cassandra Valk, and Princess Elizondo and a Santa Rita Elementary school student, Laura Prier. With the support of Don Prier, the AVHS Robotics coach, and a team of scientist and engineers from Agilent Technologies (Neil Henden and Gene Cousins), NAFEO / NASA (Donald Prier) and Lockheed Martin (Eric Hultgren, Monikka Mann, and Brian Kincaid), the teams successfully designed and operated two devices that stunned the competition. Mear’s team, “Vanessa Rocks!” came in third out of 200 teams in the “Extra Challenge” (Hardest Competition) and Blackketter’s team, Zip Zaps, won one of the top awards for “The Most Creative and Innovative Design”

Good Job Alta Vista!