Monday Morning

We had 17 members along with our guest speakers, Ken Stephani and his son Joshua and his classmate Bryce.  A “Happy Buck” was offered by Glen Treml for his wife’s recently completed surgery.  Gary Miller is organizing an InterClub to the NFDL Key Club for next Thursday, December 5th at Horace Mann High School at 2:30PM. Check your calendar to see if you can attend.  Sign-up sheets started circulating for our Annual Family Christmas Breakfast on Monday, December 16th and also for our Annual Christmas Party on Thursday evening, December 12th at Steve and Mary Millin’s house.  Chris Serres was the winner of the 50/50 Raffle drawing and she drew the Two of Hearts, another non-winner.  Next week’s game will have 42 cards with eight pay cards and a pot of at least $125.

 VEX Robotics Team

Ken Stephani and his son Joshua and his classmate Bryce joined us on Monday morning to talk about the relatively new VEX Robotics team in North Fond du Lac.  The team is currently made up of ten students and Ken is their current coach.  The robotics team meets every Wednesday after school (around 2:30PM) at Bessie Allen Middle School to work on their robot and fine tune their competition strategy.  The initial robotics kit from VEX Robotics costs about $800 and annual updates or new game attachments can cost anywhere from $200 – $400 per year depending on the game for the year.  The Robotics Club is looking to buy a robotics field in order to practice for their competitions on a surface similar to that used in the competitions.  The cost of the field is approximately $1,500 with another $500 for interchangeable parts to simulate the current year’s game.  Ken talked about the benefits of a robotics team in the local schools as a way to stimulate the students’ interest in math and science with real world design and fabrication.  While the current team is all male Ken is hoping that future teams will include female students as well to help stimulate their interest in science and technology.  Ken also told our Club about how they fund the team.  One of their fund raisers is next Wednesday night, December 4th, at Buffalo Wild Wings.  Go out for dinner and support this excellent team.