Tech club held its annual kickoff meeting during which their team competed in RoboFlag against other schools in the cafeteria Saturday, Sept. 7.  

“The meeting gave me the impression that there is a lot more interest in robotics this year, and I look forward to competing with the new schools and team,” junior Tristan Aikman said. “I would say the battle royals were most beneficial, as it refreshed my memory on who/what we’ll be competing against this upcoming year, and how to tailor our robot to beat the competition.” 

The meeting consisted of over 30 students from seven nearby schools that used the working robots constructed during the previous school year to compete in the Battle Royale portion of the Roboflag contest.  

“I helped build the RoboFlag robot, and I was really happy with how well it worked out especially because of all the time we spent on it,” senior Mateo Craig said. “We ended up winning the king of the hill event although it was pretty close. Nevertheless, I think everyone had a fun time watching the robots throw each other around.” 

Once the winner was announced, each team started coding “Hello World,” a short robot program that, once executed, displays a two–word message. 

The club sponsor, Robert Tait, included the programming portion at the end of the meeting to ensure that students without experience would have the opportunity to start learning. 

“We wanted to have all the teams to have a start into how to write their own code, so that they can still compete without necessarily having to have a sponsor because that’s one of the biggest problems with robotics,” Tait said. “There aren’t many teachers at schools that have a background in coding, so that often is the stopping point for these kids. They want to do robotics.”