By Evan Norris — The Robotics team’s six week long competition is nearing an end. On Oct. 17 and 18 the team will participate in its only competition of the year BEST (Boosting Engineering Science Technology). The competition is held at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. The level of competition will be very high.

“All teams are good,” junior Jimmy Glass said.

The competition the team is competing in is called BEST (Boosting Engineering Science and Technology). Going into this competition the team is not given any clues on what they need to build. They are given a tub of materials and have to start constructing the mechanism they have created while brainstorming.

The theme of this year’s competition is called Blade Runner. The objective of the competition is to build a wind turbine. It just isn’t a simple wind turbine, the turbine has certain obstacles it has to pass. One being the turbine does not harm any of the local wildlife. In this case the local wildlife will be prairie chickens. Many different steps must be take to prevent hurting the wildlife.

The amount of time that is given to create such a mechanism can play a big factor in how the wind turbine is constructed. The team has to build their turbine on site which could have a huge impact on the building process.

“We have no time set, it depends on our strategy,” Glass said.

Because the team does not yet know their materials, they can not even practice building a wind turbine. During the team’s practices they focus on strategy of accomplishing their goal.

As of now, the robotics team consist of only seven students. This has its effects on the team when they compete in competitions. As compared to other schools it takes them a much longer time building.

“Since there is a low number of people on the team, we can’t do stuff as quickly,” Glass said.

This year’s robotics team consist of the following students, senior James Miller, juniors Dan Fanara and Jimmy Glass, sophomores Anthony Demetro and Clay Curran, and freshmen Justin Bartos and Chase Lane. These seven students possess the interest coach Shawn Kimbrough looks for.

“You should have an interest in engineering, programming, computer science, science and building,” Kimbrough said.

While the first robotics competition is over, another robotics team is forming called the National robotics team. National robotics has no relationship to the robotics team. It is another club where students compete with a robot in Marion, Ohio against people from many different schools across the state.

Students interested in joining the National robotics team should talk to Kimbrough in his room P149.

[Updated Aug. 7, 2017: This article has been reformatted for consistency.]