Mason Labonte, a freshman at Spruce Mountain High School in Jay is active in robotics, student council and other school organizations. He is seen during a robotics presentation in this photo from the Feb. 9 Regional School Unit 73 Board of Directors meeting at the middle school in Jay. File photo/Livermore Falls Advertiser
JAY — Mason Labonte is a freshman at Spruce Mountain High School who is already involved in several school activities.
Last summer Mason joined other Spruce Mountain High School students who were asked to become part of Blue Crew FIRST Robotics Competition [FRC] Team 6153 from Mt. Blue Campus in Farmington. Mentors and students from Spruce were invited to join the Farmington team last year.
FIRST is an abbreviation of For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. FRC is an international high school robotics program. It combines the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology, according to the FRC website.
“Our season just started,” Mason said in a Feb. 16 interview with the Livermore Falls Advertiser. “We have an eight-week build period, do competitions directly after that. During what we call the offseason we do fundraising. I was taking photos for the group, posting them online. I helped maintain our Facebook page and website.
Mason Labonte participated in the Summer Heat competition, his first as a member of Blue Crew 6153. The team was part of the winning alliance at the FIRST Robotics Competition Summer Heat Event held June 25 in Falmouth. From left, front row, are Lily Bailey, Finn Zimmerschied, Emily Hammond and Mason Labonte; back row, Nathan Hall, Owen Schwab, Ben “Kaleb” Daku, Jesse Daku, Jack Cramer, Dan Wilson, Gentry House, Abby St. Clair and Trevor Hogan. Kevin Murphy photo
“At the end of June I attended the Summer Heat competition with the team which was an offseason event over at Falmouth High School,” Mason said. Blue Crew was part of the winning alliance at that competition.
Mason was with the team during the Rangeley Lakes 4th of July celebration, at the Wilton Blueberry Festival in August and the Livermore Falls Apple-Pumpkin Festival in September. Before the start of school last fall, he and other team members served root beer floats to teachers during prep week in the Mt. Blue school district.
At the Feb. 9 Regional School Unit 73 Board of Directors meeting, Mason shared dates for upcoming out-of-state competitions the team planned to compete at or hoped to qualify for. The directors gave team members from that district permission to travel to those and another competition this year.
“Our team captain, Emily Hammond at the beginning of the school year came up to me and asked if the spirit and imagery captain position was something I was interested in taking on,” Mason said. “Because we like to have a full executive committee of students in leadership positions for the team, we have a process of applying for a position. We need to have a resume, and we have a short interview with team mentors. There are two students on the interview committee as well.”
Mason was named spirit and imagery captain and the committee has been working on several things to help promote the team.
“We are working on buttons,” Mason said. “We have a team button which is a team logo with our team mascot, R2 Blue 2 in the form of a hat sitting on top of the logo. That stays the same every year. Then we also have season specific buttons.”
This year the challenge from FIRST is called Charged Up, where teams are inspired to see the potential of energy storage in a new light as they compete to charge up their communities.
“We did a team vote a couple of weeks ago, had a couple of submissions,” Mason said. “We sent out a Google form, which is a survey that [members] take. We just got this year’s buttons.”
A team member has also designed a flag, Mason said. “We had a flag last year but rushed to get that because we needed it in time for the competition,” he explained. “So we decided to redo it this year and hopefully have it for years to come. It’s a nice flag to have. We got funding for that. The Jay Lions Club sponsored it. Mentor Rob Taylor is a Lions member.”
Because sponsors change every year, team T-shirts are also being redone, Mason said. “We also had a vote for that, I think we had two submissions,” Mason stated. “We are having those made at the Foster Career and Technical Education Center Commercial Arts program. We also have sweatshirts that we do every year.”
Mason Labonte was named an honorary member of the Regional School Unit 73 Board of Directors in February 2021. In this file photo from October 2019, he invites directors to a luncheon put on by his class. Also pictured are Directors Phoebe Pike and Joel Pike. File photo/Livermore Falls Advertiser
Mason is also involved with other school activities. As a seventh grade student at the middle school, in 2021 he was named an honorary member of the RSU 73 Board of Directors. “I am still watching school board meetings to see what is happening within the school district,” he said. “I am hoping to have a student representative position when I get to junior or senior year.”
On the student council, Mason serves as vice president of the freshman class. “Right now we are gearing up for our Phoenix Fest,” he said. “It’s like Winter Carnival that we do. We will be working on that after we get back from vacation. The dates haven’t been decided yet.
“Each class will come up with some games for each class to participate in and get class points to go towards the class point system.”
The freshman class is also working on fundraisers, Mason noted.
Sources of Strength, a suicide prevention program is something else Mason is active with. “This is a brand new program that we just started up this year,” he said. “It is to have students helping other students to try to find mental health resources. It’s a group of students that were selected by teachers. We have campaigns going on around the school to promote mental health.”
One campaign is a display of sticky notes on a window in the school library, Mason said. He wasn’t part of that, but the notes are to make people feel good.
Mason doesn’t currently participate in programs outside of school. “Robotics kid of consumes your life, it’s very time consuming,” he stated.
When asked about favorite subjects, Mason said math was his least favorite. “It’s just the complexity of math,” he added.
English is Mason’s favorite. “I think in life you need to have a good understanding of writing and reading,” he said. “If you are planning to enter a more professional environment, you need to have a good understanding of different things.”
One of Mason’s current classes is an AP computer science class taught by Kymberly Bryant. The class offers dual enrollment through UMaine Augusta to earn college credits while still in high school, he said. Mason plans to take similar courses in the coming years.
Mason doesn’t have a college picked out yet, hasn’t looked into specific programs but plans to study computer science after graduation. Computers in general intrigue him, he noted.
“There’s nothing like anything there is today with computers,” Mason said. “We are always advancing that field.”
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