Last Saturday, the Robotics team traveled to San Antonio for the annual San Antonio Qualifier Competition. The competition was successful for the Viperbots.
“There were ten rounds that every team had to participate in and seven of the runs we had the highest scores. We scored one hundred points or higher and other teams scored between a thirty and forty point range,” robotics club sponsor Mr. Ritter said.
The team’s won Winning Alliance Captain, PTC Design Award and Inspire Award Runner-Up
Overall, nineteen teams competed in the regional competition; the teams came from all over the hill country area.
“We worked really hard to get to where we needed to be for the competition,” junior Ben Streber said.
The team started working on the robot in late September after school on Thursdays. As time went on, the team worked more diligently and had Saturday work days and stayed more days after school during the week.
“It was a lot of work, but it paid off. I’m proud of the work we have done and I’m proud of the team and to be a part of it,” sophomore Nathan Munoz said.
There are eight juniors work on the robot. Ben Streber is the team captain and helped design the robot. Juniors Marcos Lima, Trey Kind and Nelson Feses are builders and work with Ben on the design. Seniors Landon Prewitt and Dylan Phelps are programmers, which means they make the robot move around. Prewitt and Lima are also drivers at the competitions. Junior Hannah Von Oldenburg is the organizer documenter which means she is in charge of all the paperwork and photography that happens at meets. Junior Nathan Munoz is an AutoCAD and works on the three-dimensional parts of the robot. Mr. Ritter and Mr. Allen are mentors to the team.
The robot’s name is R2V2, which is “the teams’ version of R2D2 from Star Wars,” Streber said.
The Viperbots will compete February 18 at Anderson high school as a practice run against other schools in the Austin area. The team would like to extend an invitation to all students, parents and faculty to join them and come out to support the team. On March 2, the team will travel back to San Antonio for the state competition round; if they win they will advance to Worlds, which will be held in Georgia in late April.
