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Clemente's RoboCats Head to World Championship
Yesterday, we brought you a story on a new student council at Roberto Clemente High School that’s trying to stop violence between students at the school. Today, we return to Clemente to hear from another student group there—one that’s trying to bring home the gold.
ambi: Sound of horn. ‘Welcome to the finals’
For the past five years, thousands of people have flocked to the Georgia Dome in Atlanta to watch football, basketball… robots.
That’s right, robots. First, a non-profit that promotes mentoring students in science and technology, kicks off their annual championship robotics competition today. Eileen Sweeney from the Motorolla Foundation says it’s on her list of favorite things.
SWEENEY: I think that the world championships is one of the most memorable events for me in the whole year, and I’ve been to the superbowl, I’ve been to the World Series, I’ve been to the Olympics.
After winning the Midwest Regional in March, Roberto Clemente Community Academy’s team is headed to the championships. Junior Felix Matanzo helps control the team’s robot on the field.
MATANZO: We’re gonna compete against the Chinese, the Japan. You know they have great minds, and we got the opportunity to compete against them.
And that’s no small feat. In fact, Clemente didn’t even have a robotics team until last year. They were able to build a robot for the 2007 regional competition, but that was largely due to other teams’ support.
MATANZO: The other teams helped us to build the robot.
RoboCat Coach John Quinn:
QUINN: I just made a promise to ourselves that next year, which would be this year, we would be much more well-prepared and build our own.
This year, the team entered the six-week build season with a lot of determination, and two Motorolla engineers as mentors.
OLIVERA: This can take up every moment of your free time, and I’m not kidding.
Mentor Rich Olivera isn’t complaining though. He willingly took two weeks of vacation so that he could meet and work with the team after school. Even then, senior Jhovanny Quezada says the RoboCats often worked into the night.
QUEZADA: Sometimes they left us in here locked inside, so we had to get the engineers to open the doors for us.
When the regional competition rolled around, the team was optimistic their hard work would pay off. But with limited resources and just six students, it was hard not to be intimidated.
QUEZADA: You see all these busses coming with a whole bunch of people, and so many materials, like tools and stuff, and it’s just so crazy that they’re just one team.
Senior Richard McBride agrees:
MCBRIDE: I mean, they come with like an arsenal, they come with a cheerleading squad of their own.
As it turns out, robotics isn’t always about fancy accessories. In the competition, alliances work together to score points. The RoboCats have done well because they excel at basic tasks that more complex robotics teams may have overlooked.
OLIVERA: That was our strategy to begin with because we couldn’t make anything very complex because we didn’t have a machine shop at our disposal.
The Clemente team is hoping those same basic skills will carry them through the competition in Atlanta.
MCBRIDE: I’d say we have a chance, but it’s not really really really big.
As amazing as it would be for them to win, Richard, Jhovanny, and Felix say that getting to the dome is kind of a victory unto itself.
MATANZO: I always wanted to do robots, make something out of my life, because I had nothing before.
The team will find out how their robot places this weekend, when the competition wraps up. And although they won’t have an official cheerleading squad, Olivera, Quinn, and Clemente principal Leonard Kenebrew will be at the sidelines offering their support.
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