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On February 22, three members of the Robotics Club of Robinson Township Christian School walked into North Allegheny High School for their first-ever competition.

According to principal and engineer-by-training Bryan Campbell, the team had a "GREAT" showing.

"I am proud of our RTCS Robotics Club students for successfully advancing through the first round of their first VEX Robotics Competition, making it to the elmination rounds," Campbell said. They competed against fourty-four other high school robotics teams, placing twenty-first after the intial qualifying rounds.

The RTCS Robotics Club were up against large schools from all over Pennsylvania. In each round, two teams' robots, which were constructed over the course of the year from a VEX kit, compete for 2 minutes on a twelve- square-feet field. Each robot is evaluated on a variety of components; the winner is the one that receives the highest overall score.

On the RTCS team, Nathaniel Brown (11th grade), team driver and captain, made programming changes in between matches. Jimmy Kelsey (8th grade) switched out batteries and kept the batteries charged. Theo Campbell (8th grade) communicated with each team member to discuss robot strengths and strategies for each match.

"With one junior, two eighth-graders, and only three months to prepare, our team was still able to advance to the elimination round where it lost a close match by a score of 13-9. This represented a very respectable finish for our school's first time at the event and has invigorated our kids to already start thinking about next year's competition," Campbell said.

Beginning in April 2019, the RTCS Robotics Club will prep for another great showing in 2020.

Campbell gives special thanks to volunteer mentors, Ryan Mott, Daniel Richards, and Scott Ferguson, who shared their engineering skills and time with the students to help them prepare, and to the other RTCS Robotics students, who have been putting in extra hours outside of school time to build and learn about robotics.

VEX Robotics is a leading provider of educational and competitive robotic products to schools, universities and robotics teams around the world. More than twenty-two thousand schools in over fifty countries use VEX products and participate in VEX Competitions.

Congratulations to the students and mentors of the RTCS Robotics Team!