By Iris Campbell
The San Marcos High School’s rookie robotics team charged out of the shoot at their first-ever competition, taking 5th place in a field of 26 high schools with veteran teams and.
Now they are advancing to the state level competition in December. The team is sponsored by Brad Walker, Career & Technical Education (CTE) and Science teacher at SMHS.
Walker says the core of the new robotics team organized shortly after school began in late August with the goal to compete in the “Capitol Best” robotics competition held in Austin.
After their first road trip in September, they realized just what a challenge they had taken on.
“Our job for the next six weeks was to develop through proper engineering approaches and techniques a robot capable of collecting tennis balls, racquet balls, six ounce cans and inflatable globes handling anywhere from 30 to 48 inches in the air—not to mention grab hold of and maneuver a scaled model of an 18-wheeler tanker trailer around a 10 foot by 10 foot playing field,” Walker said.
Each of the listed items represented a chemical element or compound. The goal is to collect the needed components to form higher level compounds, and thereby a higher score. Although the competition theme was “Energy,” Walker says the “game was basically robots and chemistry.”
The team took on the challenge and membership grew. Excitement began to build, but so did the workload before the machine was completed.
The team participated in a practice run in Georgetown, and spent the next week refining the machine.
The weekend of October 24, the robotics team competed at Westlake High School against 25 other area schools.
The SMHS team earned 5th place, and this placement qualifies the team for regional competitions before the state championships.
“We were in second place most of the day,” Walker said, “but fifth is a good standing considering that most of the schools competing were veteran teams that have done this for many years. This is our first year.”
The team will head to Denton on Dec. 4 for the next level of competition. “Right now the robot is in pieces for some remodeling and a makeover, so I’m a bit nervous. But piece by piece, the robot will be up and running, ready for the December event,” Walker says.
The Rattler Robotics team is a part of the San Marcos CISD district-wide academic campaign to bring more science and math into the curriculum and into extra-curricular activities.
