The Robotics team worked long and hard to build three robots to compete on Saturday, January 29, in the FIRST Robotics Competition. They spent countless hours after school, on the weekends and late in the evening to make their three robots perfect. On Saturday, the senior team scored 24, the intermediate team scored 21 and the rookie team made it all the way to the finals, receiving 2nd place in their division.

You may not know it, but a lot of unseen hard work goes into preparing a pristine robot for competition. To prepare for the date, competitors must build, wire and program a robot and create an engineering notebook. Their robot has to score points by shooting balls into a raised center goal and corner goal or by claiming beacons. In addition to scoring points, the teams are interviewed by three judges. In this interview, competitors must show how they grew as engineers, how they learned to use the engineering process, and how they spread the FIRST Robotics message of “gracious professionalism” to their school and community.
Right off the bat, two of the three teams encountered issues. The senior team’s programming kept crashing, and on the intermediate team, everything that could go wrong did. Within seconds after every round, the teams ripped their robots off the fields and began screwing, programming and taping. Throughout the day, as their place dropped lower and lower, the teams never lost hope. FIRST Robotics is filled with so many benefits that even if a team finishes last, they gain so much in knowledge and memories that the whole day is worth it.

“There is not one single thing that makes being a part of robotics so incredible. It is a mixture of the freeing atmosphere, supportive and amazing people and, of course, our spectacular room that we refer to as ‘The Bunker.’ Overall, I think people commonly think robotics is just about building robots to complete absurd tasks, but it it is really more about building yourself and becoming who you truly are. My favorite part of being on the robotics team is who I have become because of it. It allows me to push myself to not only be a better builder and engineer, but a better leader and friend,” said team leader and junior Alex Sabala.

This year has been filled with stress, tension and tears, but in the end every second is worth it. The team may not have won a shiny trophy, but they gained so much more knowledge that they can use to make next year great!