For three weeks, the robotics team has competed in the different sections of the San Antonio BEST Robotics competition after a season filled with challenges. 

“This year was tough because we had a lot of students on the team who were in band,” sponsor James Wilcox said. “Probably 95% of the kids were gone almost every weekend, so it was hard to get people in here to practice. I was also out for a week with COVID, so that really hurt.”

Despite these setbacks, the team went on to be set at 15th place in the SA BEST Competition, which judges the team’s performance in areas such as their engineering notebook, design process, and marketing.

“We were able to put some stuff together,” Wilcox said. “We presented a marketing presentation, competed in the game, made our website, and with all that together we made 15th place out of 31 schools. I think we did really well with the defficinces we had this year.”

The final competition was November 6th, where the team came together to show off their robot in the virtual competition, completing demolition-themed tasks for points over a google meet with game runners.

“We had 20-something kids here and 7 actually driving the robot around,” Wilcox said. “They had a good time figuring out how to drive it and what to do in the competition.” 

The team placed 15th out of the 31 schools in this competition as well. Though not placing high enough to advance to state like in previous years, the team was happy with their performance despite their setbacks.

“We had to make a lot of changes to our original design, and even more last minute changes during the competition,” freshman Felix Mendoza said. “Sure we didn’t get first or second, but placing is better than not placing at all.”

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Mrs. Taitano