Every year the Powell High School [PHS] Robotics Club hosts their duck race fundraiser. Members of the club sell ducks to friends and family, and whoever purchases the winning duck wins an assortment of prizes collected from local businesses. 

Ducks are sold for $5 a piece, but they also offer deals like the quack pack, $20 for 5 ducks, or $50 for a quackers’ dozen (13 ducks).

The fundraiser requires a lot of work from the robotics club members, and they spend a lot of their time running around town asking for donations and selling ducks. At the end of the month, they will take all of the ducks sold and dump them into the lazy river at the Powell Aquatic Center. The owners of ducks finishing in the top three places after three laps win the prizes collected by club members.

“Club members go out into the community and ask businesses to donate items from their stores,” PHS teacher and robotics coach Mr. Joel Hayano said. “We then make three prize baskets for the winners. Once we get prizes, club members check out ducks and ‘sell‘ them to the public.”

Despite the plethora of ducks, it doesn’t seem to be enough for the ever-growing robotics club. In the past, members have sold all of their ducks and come back to check out more, only to find that they’ve all been sold.

“We have around 700 ducks, but we usually sell all of them every year,” Junior Isabelle Lobinger said. “Mr. Hayano has been getting more over the past couple of years though.”

The robotics club gets very little funding from the school itself, so almost all of its costs are covered by fundraising. With some trips costing up to $80 per person, club members rely on the concession stand, as well as fundraisers such as the turkey trot and, of course, the duck race.

“Money raised goes to each individual member. They each get money for each duck they sell,” Mr. Hayano said. “It helps pay for meals, hotels, etc. for the season.”

Nobody really knows where the idea for the duck race came from, but it’s been going on for ten years now, and it doesn’t look like it will be stopping any time soon. Rubber ducks have a very special place in the hearts of programmers.

‘’When you have a bug in your program, you just talk to a rubber duck and talk it out until you figure out what the bug is,” senior Nolan Reitz said. “So ducks are very symbolic to programmers and in robotics all together.”

The robotics club also uses the duck race as an opportunity to grow the robotics community. Selling ducks often give robotics members a chance to share what the club does and spark the interest of a possible new member.

“It really gets the community involved, whether they’re donating or they’re buying ducks,” Lobinger said. “You can also go around and just talk to people about the robotics program and people get really excited and interested in it.”

All around, the duck race is a fun and helpful fundraiser that keeps the robotics club running. The club enjoys putting the race together and members use all of the funding to do amazing things and grow as engineers.

“My favorite part is just watching all the little ducks in the pool going around the lazy river,” Reitz said. “It’s really entertaining.”