“Find Your Spark” is the theme for this year’s National 4-H Week, and for the Washington County Eaglebots, 4-H has helped feed their spark for robotics.

The Eaglebots were born out of the Kirkwood Washington County Regional Center in 2018, but due to some restrictions in allowing younger team members to join, the team eventually found a partnership with Washington County 4-H to become a club. The team competes as part of the First Tech Challenge, and meets twice weekly and on occasional Saturdays to learn the aspects of robotics and coding, build a robot and practice assigned tasks, and tackle other needed components of the team, particularly fundraising. Club volunteer Jim Pitcher has helped lead the team since their start at Kirkwood and he shares how they’ve since developed, “4-H has become a very good fit for us, they promoted our team and even coordinated getting our present space here at Greiner Buildings so it’s been a good experience for the fourth year that we’re doing robotics.”

Club President Tyler Alderton and his teammates’ ambitions this year are to advance to the First Tech Challenge Iowa Championship next spring after they competed virtually last year, “My goal would have to be to learn about our new members, maybe create a new friend if I can along the way, and do and improve more compared to last year since we were limited. I hope we can do better and meet new teams and have a great time compared to last year where it was limited.”

You can hear more from the Eaglebots during today’s Halcyon House Washington Page program as part of National 4-H Week. Washington County 4-H is ranked as one of the top 10 largest county programs in the state with over 350 4th-12th grade members enrolled last year and 180 kindergarten-3rd graders in Clover Kids. Families are encouraged to enroll their youth in 4-H this week as clubs kick off their new year this month. For more information visit here.