Our Team

 

The Career Academy team was established in 2015 by David Ebersol.  Our Team is the 5484th team to be registered with FIRST.  This team has participated in the FIRST Robotics Competition since its inception.

When the program started the initial response was lackluster, not one single student showed up.  Mr. Ebersol not being deterred, made it a point to talk to every student he could and by the end of the school day Mr. Ebersol had complied a 10-member robotics team.  In the Career Academy’s first year, the team won the Rookie All-Star award and competed in the State Competition. Continuing to build on that success, the team qualified for another run in the State Championship in the 2016 season placing very high in the state competition.

The robotics program has grown exponentially from 1 mentor and 10 students in 2015 and now currently consists of an amazing team of 12 mentors and 34 students in 2017.  The team of volunteer based mentors are focused on transforming these young adults into productive critical thinkers, that learn to design, craft, and troubleshoot very complex systems, as well as communicate their innovative ideas and plans with their peers and supervisors.

With our current Robotics Team, we are poised to make another run to WIN the State Competition this year.

Our Coaches

Head Coach

David Ebersol

David started the team back in 2015 and puts in more hours than any single person is expected to.  He believes and works so hard to ensure that these students get what they need and achieve success through critical thinking and team work.  He has been a teacher at Career Academy since 2014 and is driving a team of inspiration and dedication.

Assistant Coach

Roger Johnson

Roger joined David in the middle of the 2015 season and was inspired to coach full time with the team following David's lead and drive to do what's right for students.   This is his second year as an assistant coach but he has learned a lot about the program and is growing with the students as he teaches them the skills they need to be successful.

Our Volunteer Mentors

Without these mentors, we could not be the team we are.  We would not have a problem without the countless hours these mentors spend with our team to help us be successful.

 

Anne Wierenga - 4 years

Anne starting mentoring the team with support activities when her son joined the team in 2015.  She runs our parent support group and facilitates competition logistics with students.

Tom Evans - 3 years

Tom comes to our team mentoring other teams also.  He has a great amount of building and fabrication and brings experience to designing and building which gives students a great amount of help.

Andy Edellbrock - 3 years

Andy mentors other teams with his great design and critical thinking skills and gives great out of box thinking that our students use with great passion for the program.

Mike Chartier - 2 year

Mike is a new mentor and has been without exception a critical mentor showing our students how to troubleshoot and rethink ideas.