The robotics team will be traveling to Dallas Thursday to compete in the Robotics State Competition Rookie Bowl. The coach and team competed at district in November and finished second overall, making them the top rookie team in their district.
“Qualifying as the Top Rookie Team for our HUB means we will compete in the Rookie Bowl against 11 other teams,” robotics coach Desiree Hutchins-Boyett said. “In this portion we will only compete with our notebook and the robot competition. The top team from the Rookie Bowl competes in the Robot finals against all the veteran teams.”
The game consists of driving the robot around a playing field, trying to score points by collecting ping pong balls, and using the robot to complete a variety of tasks in three minutes against four other teams.
“We used certain levers and buttons to lift gates, tip over tweeter towers and climb in to grab several PVC pipes from different areas,” sophomore Caleb Anderson said. “A tweeter tower is a tower with data in a certain section, and when you hit a pedal on it, it drops false data into your opponents fields.”
Since the creation of the robotics team last February, the team has worked on learning to adapt and work as one. Despite their early struggles, they found a way to make it to the state competition despite their early struggles.
“We had an incident at competition where one of the wheels started stripping so we have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” sophomore Nathan Stringer said. “I always check the robot right before to make sure everything works right and nothing goes wrong.”
Another portion of the competition involves spirit, complete with dancing and noisemakers. One member of the team stepped up to fulfill this portion of the contest.
“He [Caleb] volunteered to do the mascot dance off and there were not a lot of hands going up for that job,” Huchins-Boyett said. “Anyone that can dress like Joe Roughneck and dance to the Macarena for four minutes is a champ.”
The team hopes to finish strong and set a good foundation for years to come, and have a positive experience on this educational trip.
“My personal goal for state is really just to have fun,” Anderson said. “We are a rookie team, and this is our first year ever being a part of this, or even having an engineering team, so just have fun.”
