RoboDragons return from Texas
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The RoboDragons pose together at the FIRST Champi- onship in Houston. Pictured on the top row, from left, are Colton Nicley, James Davis, Christian Staton, Michael Thelen, Damien Eitel, Ryan Butler, Ligia Boundy, Dakota Totherow and Wyatt Delk. On the bottom row are Lilly Hill, Aiden Davis, Leah Thelen, Jennifer Miller, Jackson Ayers, Eneri Davis, Sarah Boundy, Micah Williams, Jordan Jones and Nate Deuble
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Leah Thelen, Nate Deuble and Colton Nicley of the Clinton High School RoboDragons work on Robo Baggins, their robot, at the FIRST Championship in Houston.
The Clinton High School RoboDragons returned from Houston with some victories and many lessons.
The robotics team won three matches and lost seven matches in its division April 17-20.
The team competed against others from Mexico, Israel, Japan and Turkey at the FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, championship.
The team built, designed and controlled a robot, Robo Baggins, who gathered foam rings and placed them in a six-foot-tall goal, as did every other team’s robot. This ring-placing task gave the CHS robot its name. For extra points, Robo Baggins and the other robots climbed a chain.
“It was just absolutely phenomenal,” said James Davis, the team’s coach. “If you want to be one of the big names, you’ve got to compete with the big names.”
He said that the team wanted to learn what it could from some of the other teams’ robots and see the kinds of things on which they could improve next year.
“Winning every single match isn’t necessarily the goal; it’s about improvements and really just learning,” he said.
He also said the trip itself was an opportunity for the students to leave the Clinton community and meet people from other places.
“They want to work hard and earn their way back to do it again,” he said of the RoboDragons.
The team advanced to this championship because it had won at the Smoky Mountain Regional Championship at the Knoxville Coliseum on March 3 doing the same tasks.
Davis said the RoboDragons’ roster includes 17 students. Six are seniors. The other 11 may return next year, and able to apply the lessons from Houston to next year’s competition. Davis said he hopes to recruit incoming freshmen.
“It gives students the ability to apply the theoretical things they learn in classrooms,” he said. “You sit in a math classroom and think, ‘When will I use this?’ You definitely use it building robots.
“High school’s tough, and being able to have a group of students with like interests and like goals can really benefit students.”
Davis thanked the people of the Clinton community and the team’s partners for their donations and support, allowing the trip to happen.