Nicki Bonczyk ’08

Believe it or not, somehow Nicki Bonczyk ’08 manages to have a life of her own.

She attends friends’ weddings, travels on vacation (Bermuda is a favorite), runs half marathons—two last year—and completes puzzles—pretty massive ones, honestly. The largest puzzle she ever completed was over 40,000 pieces!

Which is amazing, because on top of working full-time as a mechanical engineer for JR Automation—a job she has worked since graduating from Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in 2012—Nicki also coaches the Holland Christian High School robotics team, known in the Michigan robotics world as “Team 107.” Actually Nicki coaches both the HCHS and HCMS teams. Which means that she is coaching robotics 3-4 times a week for nine months of the year—since the middle school season is in the fall, from September through December, and the high school robotics season runs January through April. Oh, and Nicki typically coaches and gathers the team once a week in the summer too. And did we mention that she does all this on a volunteer basis—for free?

Nicki’s involvement with HC’s robotics team all started as a family affair with her dad, Bob Bonczyk, who helped start the HCHS robotics team back in 1995, when Nicki was barely a kindergartner. As a tool and die maker at what was then Prince Corporation, Bob realized the huge impact that a high school robotics team could have not only on local students and their futures, but also as a positive investment into the local workforce. Over the almost 30 years that Bob helped coach robotics, he became known not just state-wide, but even nationally for his robotics mentorship.

“I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where things like robotics were cool,” Nicki said, adding that for years her mother toted her and her little sister along to all their dad’s robotics coaching events. “So when I got to high school, I already knew that it was cool to hang out with the stereotypical ‘nerd,’’’ she laughed. “Like I already knew this was fun. It wasn’t just you had to be good at math, you had to be good at science. I just knew you had to have fun!”

“I knew they traveled, they had this great team bonding stuff, and everyone just seemed to have a really great time—and of course great dad-daughter bonding,” Nicki added.

She joined the HCHS robotics team as a freshman in 2005, with really no expectations. But then realized that the team was more than just fun: “I really loved what we were doing. The idea of creating something from nothing, hands-on building and prototyping was a great thing to be involved with. I remember asking my dad, ‘How do we get paid to do this?’” Nicki recalled, not having any idea yet as a 14-year-old what an engineer does, or even that it was a thing.

So after she started to pursue what her life would look like after high school, and since the robotics teams compete regularly at GVSU, attending there felt natural like a second home. But she also liked GVSU’s engineering program because it is one of two Michigan colleges that require a co-op program enabling their students to work at an actual business for college credit.

When Nicki had to apply for her work co-op, she headed straight to JR Automation, having already experienced as a high school robotics team member that JR Automation sponsored local robotics programs. She completed her three years of undergrad co-op at JR Automation, and then started working there right out of college.

“I get paid to play with robots! [JR Automation] works in automation, so I turned my ‘this is a really fun high school sport!’ into somebody paying me to do this,” Nicki said.

In her day job as a mechanical engineer at JR Automation, Nicki helps solve customers’ problems using automated machines with specific functions. “I work on the computer designing the equipment with CAD, very similar to robotics students solving problems with a robot they designed with CAD,” she said. “These two worlds play back and forth together extremely well!”

During college Nicki volunteered with the FIRST Robotics organization helping referee robotics events throughout Michigan. As soon as she graduated and was working full time, she started coaching robotics, and launched the middle school robotics team that HCMS shares with Zeeland Christian Middle School.

Hearing Nicki talk about robotics makes you a believer in robotics, too. She gushes charismatically about how great the kids are, how robotics gave her an extended family, fun, and a career. How they have an amazing support group of mentors all with unique skill sets, some of whom are HC grads. How some HC robotics team volunteer mentors come from sponsoring companies and as professional engineers see the need to help train the workforce of the next generation. How they have amazing local STEM companies like MetalFlow, Koops Automation, Tommy Car Wash, JR Automation, and more who sponsor them. How the HCHS robotics team volunteers in the Holland community on a regular basis, since service is a huge part of robotics—both on and off “the court” so to speak.

“It’s the only high school sport that anyone can go pro in,” she adds delightedly.

Robotics is a rapidly growing high school sport especially in Michigan, where we have more high school robotics teams—516—than any other state. Each January high school robotics teams are given a challenge through a website drop by FIRST Robotics Group, the overarching robotics governing body that divided Michigan up into its current 16 geographic robotics regions.

Last year’s challenge was a game called “Crescendo” where teams needed to design a robot to pick up and throw rings to score more points than their opponents’ robots. After the challenge announcement, the HC robotics team, with the help of local business mentors, got to work planning, designing, building and then programming their 150 lb robot to solve the problem.

The 20-some person team participates in 2-3 all day Saturday competitions each season to test their robot up against other high school teams and hopefully qualify for the state meet. Teams win the actual competition if their robot performs the best, but they also are put into alliances with other high school teams and need to strategize together. So there’s competition, collaboration.

“What’s really cool about this sport is we are highly competitive; however, there’s this huge sense of community,” Nicki said, explaining that HC’s team spends a lot of time with Zeeland Public’s team practicing together. “They’re our rival school, and our kids could care less…we’re swapping parts back and forth so often. There’s this huge sense of—we call it ‘gracious professionalism’—it’s doing your best while helping others achieve their best.

“At the end of the day we love to win—but not at the expense of not helping someone else do their best,” she added, describing how the HC robotics team joined the Holland High and Zeeland Public teams to create a giant Tulip Time parade float. “When have you ever seen the rival schools in the area do community service projects together and have a great time?! I don’t think you see that with other sports teams, clubs having that significant bonding.”

All this collaboration and community kindness overflows into the larger community as well. Since local STEM businesses fund HC’s Team 107, students are encouraged to go out and give back to their community too. They volunteer regularly at Community Action House on weekends, sorting groceries. They’ll hand out groceries for Feeding America, pushing the grocery carts through the snow so the older people don’t need to. They’ll decorate 100s of Kids Food Basket lunch bags in their downtime at practice. They helped move furniture at ditto in October so the carpet could get cleaned. The robots regularly visit VBSs in the area.

“Those kids are in the community a lot, and they enjoy it,” Nicki said, adding that there’s a general understanding of “Why wouldn’t I give back to a community that gives us so much? You give back to those who give you so much!”

This sense of community seems embedded in the team, seeps out of their pores, since they have been awarded the FIRST Impact award—the highest award a team can receive—five out of the last 6 years.

“That’s something our team is probably the most proud of,” Nicki said. “It is given to a model team that exemplifies the true core values of robotics. It speaks to the students’ community service and their commitment to be heroes of science and technology—not only sharing that this is a cool thing to do, but also hundreds of hours of service.”

By winning the FIRST Impact award and gaining enough points in competition, HC’s robotics team has earned enough points in the state competition to make it to the world’s competition at least 20 out of the last 28 years.

“We need a very high sense of ownership from students to make this work,” Nicki said, explaining how expensive it is for HC students to go to World Robotics, to send 20 students there for a week along with their robot. With zero funding from Holland Christian itself, students raise their own funds through letter writing campaigns, can drives, and local sponsorships. Last year Kendal Electric was so impressed with a presentation that the HC robotics team gave to them that they paid the robotic team’s world registration fee.

Last year was an especially difficult year for Nicki, her family, and the robotics team, since Nicki’s dad, Bob Bonczyk, had a heart attack in November of 2023, recovered enough to go home, but then got an infection that caused his death in January.

Suddenly she was dealing not only with her family’s emergency, but a team emergency as well: “My dad was the backbone that held our team together—in sports terms, he was our ‘quarterback,’” Nicki explained. “My dad was a giant child—so he was not only their mentor, he was that real good positive influence on their life.”

Obviously the mentors themselves were reeling and hurting. “We told the kids, as adults we’re broken. We don’t have time to dilly dally; you’re going to have to step up. And our kids came to the plate to play. They were bound and determined that they were going to come home with trophies, because Bob had to be proud of them,” she finished.

The loss hit Nicki and her family obviously really hard, but “it hit these kids just as hard,” Nicki said, explaining that robotics kids showed up at the hospital to visit Bob, sent cards regularly.

“In robotics we’ve always been a family. Like we are not just a sports team—we are a family,”

Nicki said. “And I think those bonds between mentors, students, parents, alumni—we had alumni from 2020 who came and supported us this whole season.”

Former robotics teammates like Lily Johnson ’23 and James Oosterhouse ’23 home from college on Christmas break took over the parts inventory, spending their Christmas vacation days organizing everything for the upcoming season.

Flowers and donations poured in after Bob’s death in January from all over Michigan, even from robotics teams out of state, since Bob was known and loved even nationally through coaching the HCHS robotics team—including from robotics vendors, GVSU’s Engineering School, GVSU Athletics Events, other colleges where robotics events had been held over the last 30-some years. Nicki and her family raised over $20,000 toward a memorial scholarship in Bob’s name for a Michigan robotics student thanks to all these donations.

“It’s a tragic sad thing that’s happened to our team, but it has bonded us in a weird way. Our kids feel—they already felt a sense of ownership on the team—and they feel even more that way,” Nicki said. “This loss not only affected us, but it affected Michigan—he was so involved with so many teams.”

Throughout the season, people from other teams, people who Nicki and the students didn’t even always know, would come up to them and share condolences, start crying, tell their favorite stories about Bob. It was a hard season for the robotics team last year, and although the team somehow made it to the state championship, it was the first year in a long time they didn’t make it to the world championship. But Nicki is already back at it with the school teams.

It’s pretty telling that an alumni profile article about Nicki Bonczyk ends up to be mostly about the HC robotics team, and about her dad, and much less about her. That’s kind of the way she is? But if you run into her at any robotics meets or non-profits around town where she and the robotics team are volunteering, please make sure to ask Nicki about herself. She’ll still probably talk most of all about her “kids” and her “robotics family.”

And you will find yourself entranced for however long she does.