Ever since Jan. 9, 2016 when senior Lindsey Fraley and the rest of the robotics team found out what game they need to be prepping for come competition season, they’ve been hard at work crafting a machine that’s built for the task.

This six-week period given for preparation is called “build season,” and it’s a crucial time for Fraley and the rest of the Cyber Cards. According to Fraley, outside of build season, the team will have limited time to work on their robot in the weeks leading up to competition season.

“Build season is more just a time where we’re all stressing to try to get the robot done and completed,” Fraley said.

In a time like this, leaders might be called upon to bring order and knowledge to the rest of the team. That’s where seniors come in.

Build season gives seniors like Fraley who are involved in robotics the chance to provide student-to-student guidance to the underclassmen on the team.

“We’re more like student mentors on the team, because we’ll have adult mentors that have actually worked in engineering…,” Fraley said. “But, I’d say that the student ones are a lot more relatable…It’s a lot easier for the rookies of the team to come to us and ask us for help.”

Robotics adviser Mike Taylor agrees with Fraley that seniors serve the purpose of passing on their knowledge on to the next generation of the team.

“On our team, seniors take the role of mentors, since they’ve been through (robotics) for years,” Taylor said. “They’ve built robots. They have a lot of experience behind them. They lead the documentation, they lead the training sessions, and they lead (the process of) getting kids ready to make a better team after they leave than when they were there.”

Freshman Morgan Riddell says that seniors have indeed stepped up during what has been her first build season.

“They’ve definitely taken charge and guided all the freshmen and sophomores,” Riddell said.

Fraley says that she joined the robotics team right in the thick of its 2013-2014 season without knowing what to expect. In spite of this, she’s grown comfortable with being on the team over time, especially now that she’s in the middle of her senior year and has taken on a more involved role than in years past as a result.