Jayden Leister, 17, and Bo Chiasson, 15, are coming home from Brazil as champions.
The two Yorkton Regional High School students competed in the WorldSkills America Competition in the robotics division at Sao Paulo last week. The boys stumbled a little bit in the preliminary rounds, but registered a perfect score in the semi-finals to take an eight-point lead over the host country and Columbia into the final.
With that comfortable cushion, Leister and Chiasson again put up a perfect score in the final to win gold.
Next up for the YRHS robotics team is the WorldSkills global competition at Leipzig, Germany in July 2013.
They are currently raising funds to take two other teammates with them to Germany. Prior to the Americas championship, the team comprised four members. Taylor Pachal and Rachael Machnee were part of the group that won the Saskatchewan and National championships last spring, but Canada could only send two to Brazil and Germany.
Getting to nationals, much less winning, was no mean feat. Just getting out of Yorkton was a challenge in itself. The robotics club at the high school, started by teacher Kevin Chiasson, Jayden and two former YRHS students in 2009, has become so popular it had to hold its own competition to determine who would go to provincials in Regina.
Six four-person teams competed for three spots in the Saskatchewan competition.
