Last year the South High Robotics team was top 16 at State. This year they hope to make it to the Vex Worlds competition, which means they either would need to be on the winning alliance (group of 3 robots that compete together) at state, or be the excellence or design winner. The excellence award is awarded to whichever robot and team is judged as being the best overall, and the design award is awarded to the team judged to have the most professional approach to designing their robot.

This year the competition is called “Nothing But Net”, and is played on a 12 foot by 12 foot with goals that the robots must throw balls into. Each robot is on a team with another robot, forming what is called an alliance, competing against another alliance to try to get a higher score than the other team can. There are different balls worth different points, and both low and high nets. You receive more points for the higher ones, which is appear to be much more difficult to get the balls into.

There are 94 balls and 10 bonus balls. The two alliances are in direct competition with each other; every ball you score is a ball the opponent can not score. There are also additional points rewarded for taking the other robot in your alliance and lifting it above your own robot, simulating something akin to a soccer celebration, which fits with the theme of nets. Note: the nets look more like lacrosse goals than soccer goals, but still that wouldn’t be an optimal descriptor for them.

The robotics team is going into the first leg of their competition, regionals, in December. The team is “defiantly” disadvantaged by the lack of funding they receive from the school, said Ella Johnstad, a sophomore and the captain of the robotics team. There are some private school teams whose “school [gives] them 5,000 dollars each year just to get to state,” she explained. In a world of competition where having newer and more advanced technology can really make a difference, the South Robotics team has always been at a distinct disadvantage.

In past years, the team has borrowed VEX robotics parts from the engineering program to build their robot, but that was never quite enough to get a robot to the kind of standard they wanted for competition. Members of the team ended up spending significant amounts out of their own pockets so they would have the materials necessary to succeed.  “We all bought stuff privately, it kinda sucks because you’re spending 400 dollars for this one part you’re going to use once” said Christian Wanek, a senior.

It could be worse though, in Wanek’s freshman year the team competed in first robotics, which is a different competition than the Vex Robotics Competition they have been competing in since 2013-2014. “First robotics was five thousand just to get into the competition, and it was like a ten thousand dollar robot” Wanek later explained.

This year eight new freshmen will be joining robotics, significantly expanding the size of the team. “It seems rather easy for us to integrate ourselves into it” said Ryan Rosillo, one of the eight freshmen. Rosillo said that the main reasons for him joining the team were his interests technology and coding, and that he had enjoyed robotics in the past.

Previously, the team has always done well, including Wanek’s sophomore year where they were one match away from nationals. This year they want to make it to the top “part of state, if not nationals” said Wanek. It’s the last year for many of the team and they hope to go out with a bang.

Johnstad came across being captain almost by accident. “I was the only freshman girl on a team of five junior boys and none of them wanted to be a captain so they decided I was the captain” said Johnstad. Unlike captain positions in sports where captains often schedule practices before the regular season practices start, Johnstad doesn’t have the same type of administrative requirements. “It’s just a title” said Johnstad.

Besides applying for a grant from the South High Foundation, various members of the team will be calling up local business to ask for small donations.