Students on the robotics team learn not only how to control a robot, but also learn how to build robots, program robots, and even how to build the controllers that control the robots. The robotics team then goes on to district and even possibly state competitions to see who has the best bot.
Last year, despite winning the preseason competition, the team did moderately in the official season competitions, scoring 26th of 80 teams in Flagstaff, and 34th of 75 teams in the Denver competition. “We did pretty well last year,” Cambria Devoy, a robotics Coach, said. “We went to our two competitions and scored in the mid range.”
Assistant coach Marcus Jordan wants both the middle school and high school teams to improve in their various skills this year. “I think our goal will be to try to win another Innovation Award for the FTC team and then for the high school team,” Jordan said. “I’m hoping that we can do really well in our out-of -state game or match.”
In order to improve this year’s robotics team, the team is looking for people who have prior experience in manufacturing, programming and driving. “Our biggest way to get new people is we usually advertise during events for the middle school. We did the middle school open house and we tried to go to several events,” Jordan said. “This year we’re going to actually do it. Manitou Springs will be hosting the Manitou Springs Robot Bash for the first scrimmage of the year.”
Team members feel that although there are continuous efforts to improve their skills, there is always the challenge of the experienced members moving on after graduation. This puts pressure on the team to both build a robot and properly train the next generation of members before the end of the next season. “I want to teach everyone as much as I can before I age out. And I hope that everyone gets to work with and drive the robot,” Marshall Torres, team captain said.
In the end, losing many of the team’s seniors last year might be a challenge. “We don’t know a ton about the game, so I will say outside of the game, the bigger challenges we will face are that we’re a smaller team,” James Devoy (12) said. “Really, we lost a lot of the people on our team with knowledge on how to build the robot.”
