With the SHS Robotics team winning multiple awards in their previous competitions, they’ve finally gained the chance to win the state championship.
On March 9, two of SHS’s robotics teams will be heading to state at the UIndy Nicoson Hall.
“I feel great,” senior Josedy Perez said. “It feels really awesome. We worked really hard, and I’m just hyped. … as much as I’m excited, I think this is where I might have to set the bar a little low here. We might not do so well, but all I really want to do is just have fun.”
During the robotics team’s second competition this year, two of their teams came first in different categories. Team 22068 won the Think Award, which according to FIRST Tech Challenge’s award description, “is given to the team that best reflects the journey the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season”, and team 22069 won the Connect Award, which according to the award description, “is given to the team that most connects with their local science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) community.” Those two teams went on to earn the ability to go to state, and if they win, they also have the chance to go to nationals.
When teams 22068 and 22069 compete in state, they will be using the same robots from their last competitions. However, they have given their robots some improvements since then.
When asked if they were doing anything differently from previous years due to this being their first time making it to state, PLTW teacher Mark Snodgrass answered that nothing overly different had changed.
Snodgrass has also expressed his excitement about two of the teams going to state and how he thinks it helped the kids.
“I think it’s exciting …,” Snodgrass said. “I think it helped those kids want to make their robot better, and they put in the effort to really write down their improvements.” “I think it’s exciting … I think it helped those kids want to make their robot better, and they put in the effort to really write down their improvements.” — Mark Snodgrass
Along with Snodgrass, the other students on the robotics teams have also expressed their excitement about going to state, such as freshman Chloe Frownfelter.
Frownfelter says that she’s super excited to go to state, and while she thinks that the chances of winning state are not that high, she’s still happy about how far they’ve come.
Senior Dawt Sang has shown similar feelings as Frownfelter even with the fact that this is the first time the rest of the kids on his team have been in Robotics.
“I think it’s a really cool thing considering three-quarters of our team … are first years,” Sang said. “I’ve only been doing this for two years, so the fact that we’re going to state is really awesome. … since it’s our first time, it’s a miracle that we even made it to state, to be honest.”
