He walks into the building, quickly scurries his way into the robotics team’s machine shops. He puts on his safety glasses and begins to instruct others who haven’t done so already. He nudges all of the students wearing long sleeves to roll up them up so they don’t get caught on anything.

This is what Alexander “Henry” Hoover, Salem senior, does as a member of Lightning Robotics, as the team’s safety captain. Hoover has been a member of the robotics team for four years. He also has been a key member of the fabrication sub group for those four years on the team.

Hoover said, “I am the safety captain of a robotics team and what that means is [making sure] that everybody is wearing the proper safety apparel, or PPE (personal protection equipment).” Hoover gets very technical and serious throughout his messages when it comes to safety.

Hoover also works on developing the future of the Lightning Robotics team. Hoover said, “I work on training [others] with our three axis mill, which is the most precise tool in the shop.” Hoover has specialized with the mill through his time on the robotics team; as he is about to graduate this year, he trained a few people in hopes of finding his successor on the mill.

Hoover commented on how the season was going, “Quite excellent actually, cause we’ve got a full working robot that we had for unveil, which was really nice, as I don’t think we’ve had one before, and we have been doing pretty good at competitions too.”

“Pretty good” translated into a world championship in May.

Hoover has enjoyed his years on the team. This has been a family affair with his father being the lead mentor for the fabrication sub group. As he moves on in life he will always find family with his friends from robotics through the years.