Our Story...

We are a passionate robotics club at Heritage Woods Secondary School, located in Port Moody, BC, Canada.

Since our humble beginning in 2016, we have inspired many at to pursue their passions. We started off competing in FIRST Robotics (FRC) and VEX Robotics with only a handful of teams. We started off strong in VEX, heading to provincials in the first season and put up a solid fight in FRC.

The seasons pass with the same results. Get into provincials in VEX, and more or less the same with FRC with us getting into the quarterfinals of Regionals. After the founders of the club graduated in 2019, we started to focus on VEX since we got an influx of new members this season.

Syntechs has always been student-led. Everything from the workshops to aquiring sponsors. We have passionate people helping out the club. Teachers supervise and guide us (thank you Mr. Zhuang and Ms. Lee!) and they always encourage us to lead the club on our own.

Our School

Heritage Woods Secondary School is our home turf. All of our teamates are from HWSS, although we will always welcome anyone that wants to join! We host a yearly VEX tournament here, usually the Winter Qualifiers. Students are called Kodiaks. Our school mascot the Kodiak bear signifies our culture while we represent our school in VEX.

Teamwork

Although we have 8 teams, we are one Syntechs family. We as a club ensure that everyone's ideas are respected, and that every team can perform to the fullest of their ability at competitions. Senior members pass down their know-hows to junior members, parent volunteers have done workshops on what aspects make a robotics team successful, and we have went on a field trip to an automated pharmaceutical production line to see robots in action. All members share an exciting learning experience.

Creativity

Being engineering enthusiasts, we seek a creative approach to design problems, always eager to innovate new solutions. Our creative thinking contributed heavily to our past successes; from an extendable storage to a chain bar attached to a six-bar, we have built unique, award-winning robots in the process of maximizing efficiency. Furthermore, we ensure that our ideas are documented through CAD models and detailed sketches.

Initiative

Syntechs Robotics is completely student-led and student-run. Although our mentors, Mr. Au-Lange and Ms. Lee guide us when necessary, they always encourage us to lead the club on our own. Avid students manage and plan everything from fundraisers and finances to club meetings and workshops for new members. Through such experiences, members develop the independent thinking and self-motivation needed for future careers.

Opportunities

Robotics teams require a diverse team with a variety of skills to be able to create a competition-ready robot. We encourage our fellow students to pursue their hobbies and interests in engineering, programming, and more.

Our club is honestly the best way to get experience in these fields at a young age. It is local, challenging, and more accessible than ever before. Experience is a great asset to have on your post-secondary transcript and resume. All of our graduate students are in post-secondary education, pursuing their passions that flourished in robotics club. Some subjects include mechatronics, computer sciences, design, and engineering.

In the future...

...we are planning on expanding our role in the school and around the community by helping out at events and volunteering as a club. We will also focus on aquiring more sponsorships to help fund our adventures moving foward and to make the cost as low as possible for new members, We want to focus on making this club acessible to everyone that is interested in robotics.

A Special Thank You

We couldn't do this without the support of our school for being the first school in SD43 to start a robotics club. The student volunteers have also been amazing at helping set up our fields for our yearly Winter Qualifier. We are very proud to represent our school in VEX and FRC tournaments. Go Kodiaks!

About Us