From programming and building robots to hosting international competitions, the robotics team creates a positive environment for students to learn important skills while improving their STEM abilities.
Students join for various reasons, many, like junior Zach Thomas, are joining as it connects to their future.
“It has a lot to do with my future career”, Thomas said. “I don’t necessarily want to do robotics as a future career now, but I still enjoy it, because I’m going down the STEM path right now.”
The robotics program is composed of students from both the school and De Soto High School to create two teams: Cubatronics, composed of the freshmen and sophomores, and Catatronics, composed of juniors and seniors.
Senior Ben Houdek shares why the teams are split.
“The way we like to think is it’s one team, just two different groups,” Houdek said. “It’s not that one team is better than the other, it’s just more experienced.”
There are different sub sections or sub teams that work on different aspects of each robot. These different sub teams work on the design, electrical, programming and strategy of the robots in order to prepare them to compete.
Robotics senior co-president senior Sam Bowling shares how the department as a whole is a welcoming group of students.
“I’d say my favorite part about [Robotics] is definitely the people,” Bowling said. “I have a pretty core group of friends that I’ve been doing [it] with for the last three years.”
The team’s collaboration has played a key role during competitions, such as the Heartland Regional Competition located in different schools. This year the school hosted the third consecutive time during spring break.
The Heartland Regional competition is sponsored by FIRST Robotics Competitions. According to KC STEM Alliance, it is a, bracket style competition with 41 teams, some even being international. The goal is for each team to demonstrate their engineering and strategy with custom robots that go through a challenging set of matches.
Throughout the matches, each team has its own “pit” to make adjustments.
“It’s kind of like NASCAR,” Houdek said. “We can come back, get everything we need and go back out to the field.”
Bowling, who has led much of the upcoming competition plans, shares the extensive preparation from the entire department.
“Obviously, we’ve been working very hard on our robots, but we’ve had a lot of production with our head mentors behind the scenes,” Bowling said. “Getting people together to help set up everything like concessions and janitorial work during the event.”
Last year the team was finalists at this competition, junior Molly Gilmore shares how this influenced the team’s goal for the year.
“Our main goal for the tournaments is to just place as high as we can using our hard work that we’ve been doing since earlier in the fall,” Gilmore said. “However, we would like to win or be finalists at our Heartland Tournament for a second time.”
No matter the result from the competition, seniors, such as Houdek, have confidence in the future of the robotics program.
driven by Donovan Roche, Saturday Feb 28. (By evan leroy)
“It’s not necessarily all about winning,” Houdek said. “I just know the team next year [will be in good hands] and I’ll come back to help, as many students who have graduated also who come back.”
Additionally returning members are open to more people joining the teams, and having them be part of a program with so many benefits.
“To anyone who would want to join robotics, they should just go for it,” Gilmore said. “Robotics provides a unique space for people with all different skill sets to work together and use critical thinking skills.”
