Silver Creek High School welcomes new robotics team

Nov. 17—SELLERSBURG — Silver Creek High School has started a new robotics team through FIRST Robotics Competition and will compete against other schools beginning in March.

For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) is a robotics community that prepares young people for the future with inclusive, team-based robotics programs for ages 4-18.

This school year, the program will be a part of a class as well as a club so any student can join and learn from the program.

The program is designed in a way so that students who have an interest in engineering, design, programming, business and more can join and learn from it.

"You have to present your product in a business plan, so it can entail a lot of different students in the school," said Jeff Harrell, Silver Creek High School's math and Project Lead The Way teacher.

Students can talk to Harrell and tell him about what they are interested in to determine if they want to join. A student may even find themselves gaining an interest in a different area than what they joined for initially.

There is no limit to how many students can join this robotics club, depending on what they want to do the team size can get up to 100 students.

A few months before the competition starts, the club will get a kit with some materials and will have to cut everything out on their own and design a robot.

"Once they release it (the kit), then we have about two or two and a half months to build a robot to do whatever skill they want you to do with it," Harrell said. "From what I've seen, it's a big deal."

In mid-March, they will go to Columbus to compete against other schools and then they will have another competition in Washington. These are on the state level, but if they win, they could go to a regional and then national level competition.

"It's exciting to get started," Harrell said. "Walking in this new endeavor, we're not sure what all it's going to entail."