Griffin Saulsbury (12) is the captain of MSHS’s robotics team for the 2024-2025 school year, and has demonstrated excellence in his role helping students succeed and learn in the club.
He has grown his skills since joining the club his sophomore year after looking for a club to join.
“I’ve always loved engineering and math, so I thought robotics should be a cool club to join,” Saulsbury said. “I kind of just thought I’d test it out and then immediately fell in love, so that’s kind of my whole life now.”
Saulsbury is both the team captain and the mechanical lead. His responsibilities as team captain consist of making sure everyone’s on the same page, having a little bit of knowledge about everything, and making sure that he is teaching people. As mechanical lead he is in charge of the mechanical aspects of building a robot and maintaining it.
“My job is making sure everybody knows how to do mechanical work and making sure that things run smoothly during meetings and competitions,” Saulsbury said.
Saulsbury says that he thinks a good team captain should be a good public speaker, be charismatic, have good communication skills, and have a willingness to teach. He tries to incorporate these traits into his role.
“One of the biggest things is trying to make sure everyone learns, so that after I graduate, the knowledge is passed on,” Saulsbury said. “That’s a big part of what I try to do. I try to make sure everyone knows what’s happening so we are as efficient as we can be during the meetings.”
James Devoy (11), a member of the robotics team, says that Saulsbury is a great leader who makes an effort to make students feel welcome in the group.
“Griffin is a great captain. He’s very charismatic,” Devoy said. “He checks in on everyone and really makes the group welcoming to the people in it.”
Many of Saulsbury’s hobbies and interests relate to his interest in robotics. He mainly enjoys working on cars and photography when he is outside of school.
“I’m trying to go into engineering, so I love math and science. A lot of my hobbies revolve around that, coincidentally,” Saulsbury said.
Following his graduation, Saulsbury hopes to attend CU Boulder as a third generation student. He plans to study mechanical engineering and aerospace as a secondary major.
“There are a lot of different fields I could go into. Automotive and aerospace would be cool, but there’s a lot of different things I could do with it,” Saulsbury said.
Saulsbury says that being in robotics throughout most of high school has influenced his interest in engineering and his experience with college applications.
“I wrote my college essay about robotics, and I’ve already been accepted to a few. So I think it’s definitely influenced my interest in engineering and my college applications,” Saulsbury said. “It’s a really strong point for college applications in general, because It’s real life engineering experience.”
Saulsbury feels that his classes, like coding and mathematics, have been beneficial to his role in robotics. He however wished that there could be more related classes.
“I wish we had an engineering class where they taught CAD, because I’m pretty much self taught with that,” Saulsbury said. “But generally there’s math classes, science classes, and all sorts of work with robotics that makes sense.”
The robotics team has a lot of seniors currently. Saulsbury is hoping that he will be able to teach the team as much as possible before graduation so that there is a smoother transition into next season.
“I’m hoping to have them taught with everything they need to know so that they can do well next year,” Saulsbury said. “That’s my biggest hope right now.”
Eddie Buckley (12), the coding lead within the club, also says that he hopes to see students staying motivated with the seniors leaving.
“I just hope people stay motivated this year,” Buckley said. “It’s a really senior heavy team, so once we leave I hope the team can stay functional without our skill set.”
One piece of advice Saulsbury would like to leave for students at MSHS would be to give robotics a try, even if you aren’t good at it. Many students view the club to be a big time commitment, but there is flexibility to manage your schedule.
“There’s a lot of people who think it’s too big of a time commitment, which is understandable,” Saulsbury said. “It’s really not as big of a time commitment as you really think it is. Just try it, and if you don’t like it you don’t have to show up.”
