With the recent school year behind them and a new one approaching, students look back on their achievements while they prepare for new ones. For Fair Oaks Ranch teen and Champion High School student Katherine Garver, this means recounting her award-winning junior year as an outreach captain of Boerne ISD’s robotics team and anticipating her captaincy senior year. 

Katherine joined her first robotics club in third grade at Fair Oaks Ranch Elementary, but it was not until she began summer classes before her freshman year that she really fell in love with the program. Here, she also developed an interest in Formula 1 racing and the mechanics behind the race cars. So, Katherine has invested time in STEM with aspirations of engineering Formula 1 cars in the future.

 

Katherine continued her involvement with robotics and joined the Boerne ISD club her freshman year. The club, called the Rocketeers, functions more as a team, competing in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics league. 

The FIRST league facilitates competitions between teams from over 60 countries. In January, participants are given a “game” for which they must design a robot. After six weeks of construction, the robots are put to the test against each other on fields the size of a basketball court. This past year, Katherine and her teammates designed their robot to collect yellow balls from the field and launch them into a basket. They were presented with the Creativity Award for using parts of a baby carriage hood to collect the balls. 

Creativity is not the only quality the Rocketeers possess. The team received awards at all three of their competitions last year for other achievements as well, one of them being the Innovative Design Award for high level design and engineering. They also won the Team Spirit Award on Easter weekend for cheering on other teams and setting up an Easter egg hunt throughout the competition building.

This camaraderie between the competing robotics teams is an essential standard in the FIRST league. Members are taught to practice “gracious professionalism” by lending robot parts or a helping hand to opposing teams. During their state competition, a crucial part of the Rocketeers’ robot broke, so they requested assistance over the loudspeaker. “We had teams from all the different pits run over and give us the part we needed,” Katherine said.

Katherine herself embodies this characteristic well. As the Rocketeer’s outreach captain and co-founder of the Women in STEM club, she was nominated by her teammates for the FIRST leadership award. They wrote an essay on her behalf describing her initiative and stewardship, and she was interviewed by judges and won the award for the state.

Her lasting impact on the robotics club includes working to gain new members for the team; they increased their numbers by 47% this past year. A large part of this growth is due to the Women in STEM club Katherine co-founded at Champion. When she joined the Rocketeers, she was one of only three girls on the team and felt out of place. “I didn't want anyone else to feel that same way, so I helped found the Women in STEM club,” Katherine said. Now that she has introduced members of Women in STEM to robotics, almost half of the Rocketeers are girls.

Katherine will serve as president of this new club her senior year, as well as captain of the robotics team, vice president of the Champion Charms dance team, and the student council treasurer. Thanks to her commitment and enthusiasm for robotics and STEM, Katherine Garver has made a lasting impact on both the Boerne ISD robotics team and the larger Fair Oaks Ranch community.