Inside the Lincoln Robotics Club's Eventful Year
This year has been an incredible milestone for the Prowler Robotics team. Because of the effort of so many students and teachers, the team was able to grow, and even participated for the first time in a national championship. Getting recognition on that big of a scale is amazing, but even more important is getting recognition from the community. More than any other year, the team has been highlighted within the school, letting the student body know about the talent this group has. Despite this, there is still a lot that students don’t know about what actually goes on in robotics. The Prowler Post was able to get in touch with Mrs. Olsonawski, one of robotics’ team leaders, and ask some of the question that Lincoln’s students might have.
Q: Explain a little bit about what you do in Robotics.
A: I am in charge of getting us signed up for the competitions, organizing practices, setting up hotels and transportation.
Q: How do you get ready to compete/how are competitions set up?
A: We have a six week build season. The competition is different every year. This year the challenge involved shooting balls and delivering gears. You are always working with two other teams on your side so it's always a three on three team arrangement.
Q: How has this year’s season gone so far?
A: Wonderful! We first attended a Week 0 event where we got to test our robot on an actual playing field and mock compete against other teams. This really helped us determine our strategy for the rest of the season. We focused on shooting the fuel and it was the key towards us getting to the Championship. Our first regional we finished in 3rd place. Based on our qualification points we then earned a spot at the state championship that is held in May. We made modifications to our robot at our next Regional and this helped us perform flawlessly and helped us get picked by the #1 alliance and we won that regional so that earned us our trip to Nationals. At Nationals we performed well and were selected by the 8th place team but lost both matches in the quarter finals.
Q: When was the last time the LHS Robotics team went to a championship?
A: We have never been to a National Championship before. We have attended the MSHSL Championship in 2013, 2016 and last weekend (May 20th)!
Q: How did national’s go?
A: At Nationals we performed well, finished in 17th place out of 68 teams, and were selected by the 8th place team but lost both matches in the quarter finals.
Q: What would you say to people interested in joining robotics next year?
A: We need all kinds of different students. We are looking for kids that want to build a robot, or kids that just want to learn about programming or kids who want to be in charge of media accounts (facebook & twitter) we are looking for students who want to be graphic and web designers, anyone and everyone can find what they are good at in robotics. We are having a sign-up, meet & greet the current team on May 25th, in the commons after school. We will be serving root beer floats, you should consider stopping by!