The Geneva High School Interact Club ran today’s meeting.

Musical duets were performed by Stephen Fazio and Ford Weiskittel on the violin and cello respectively. Ford Weiskittel noted that Stephen had been studying violin for ten years at St. Peter’s Arts Academy and was such a talented violinist that people had been asking him which music school he would be attending after graduation from GHS. The answer is none because he is equally talented in physics and mechanical and electrical engineering and is going to Georgia Tech next year. He would like to invite everyone to go to his YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/mBCSSboFDi4 to see the pneumatic air gun he built to fire a carrot at 500 feet per second at a coconut. You can also find links to others of his videos there.

Michael Baroody, Interact Club Treasurer, gave a report on the money raised by the Interact club this past year. A total of $1,752.00 was raised by Interact this year which will be split to fund three different projects.

For the Interact Club’s International Project, $1,000.00 will be donated to Angel House, an organization that builds orphanages for children in India.

$500.00 will be donated to Thrive to Survive, an organization started by Jen Harris, mother to Interactors Max and Jack Harris, that is a local cancer support group.

Finally, $250 will be donated to the Center of Concern.

Mary Gearan then presented three Service-Above-Self Awards to co-President of Interact Patrick Mahoney, who will be attending the Air Force Academy starting this summer, co-President of Interact Stephen Fazio, who will be attending Georgia Tech in the fall, and rising senior Sydney Mittiga, Interact Secretary this year and elected Interact President for next year.

James Williams, a Rotary Youth Exchange participant, presented a program about his future travels to Slovakia where he will spend a year abroad. James will be staying in a town only one hour away from the country’s capital.

Kate Equinozzi, a Rotary Youth Summer Exchange participant, presented a program about her trip to the Netherlands this coming summer. Kate will be staying in Helmond which is an hour and a half away from Amsterdam.

Lastly, members of the Geneva High School Panther Robotics team brought their robot to demonstrate. The 12-member team finished 7th of 49 at the regional competition held at RIT in March and earned the highest score of any first year team. That performance qualified them for a trip to St. Louis for the world FIRST robotics competition in April (the acronym FIRST stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). Interactors Stephen Fazio, Kyle FitzGerald, Angel Ochoa, and James Williams were all on the team. Stephen Fazio and Kyle Fitzgerald showed the features of the robot and explained how the game play worked as well as the robot itself.

A technical glitch (the laptop’s battery died) meant that they did not have a controller to drive it around or have it climb a rope, two tricks that it could perform. Unlike most of the other FIRST robots, the Geneva team used a simple design with wood which proved ultimately to be an asset, as their robot was very reliable. They thanked all their sponsors for their support.