For many students across Colorado, the blizzard before Spring Break was a cause to celebrate. Many wished for a single snow day and were instead gifted with two. The Robotics team, on the other hand, was doing the exact opposite. For them, these two days off of school ended up working against them.

    For months, the team had been preparing for the Colorado regional competition, building a robot that would be able to take on the game of the year: “FRC Stronghold.” The robot would have to face other schools’ robots in a competition where the fate of the team lies in how well-built the robot ends up being.

    “It’s a two and a half minute game. It’s pretty fast and pretty stressful,” Robotics advisor and science teacher Marilyn Kemp said. “You know if you mess up that the game is over.”

    After working long and hard to build their robot, the team was greeted by the snow, which took away the critical time they needed to practice with their newly built robot. At the Colorado regional at the Ritchie Center in Denver, the team was working with their robot for the very first time.

    “The first time [we] touched our competition robot was when we had to drive it to compete,” Kemp said. “We really struggled in Denver and, as a result, didn’t do very well.”

Driver Austin Blackman and Co-Driver Kaleb Park worked together to maneuver the robot and complete the competition—however, with the inability to practice, the team took a hard fall at the Ritchie Center.

    “We don’t speak of the Denver competition,” Park said. “It was a lot of disappointment.”

    The team took 44th place (out of 48) in Denver, but the Denver competition gave the team a chance to work with the robot and make the modifications they needed for the upcoming competition in Las Vegas, since the robot cannot be touched in between competitions.

    “Preparation is really the engineering process for the whole thing. The design, building, testing, modification,” Kemp said. “The problem we had in Denver was we hadn’t really had a chance to modify.”

    At the Las Vegas competition, the team worked hard and earned fifth place (out of 49).

    “It was really cool because there were six other countries there aside from various states,” Kemp said. “It was the result of us finally being able to spend time with the robot.”

   Park plans to work toward helping the team grow and hopes to see the team reach the national competition.

    “If we don’t, hopefully the team after us will succeed where we failed,” Park said. “It was a good season. Started off pretty bad, but ended on a high note.”

    The team has grown immensely over the last seven years, according to Kemp. The members, with the assistance of the mentors, have learned how to better manage their time and meet deadlines and work together as one unit.

    “It’s a double-edged sword because the games are so tough,” Kemp said. “It’s stressful, but that’s the way it is in the real world too. It simulates a real world situation for these kids in engineering that no other program does.”