Widefield School District 3 to send nearly a dozen teams to robotics championships as program takes off

Feb. 14—Two robots scurried around a makeshift field outside Grand Mountain Junior High School classrooms on Tuesday. Racing against the clock and each other, they pushed and launched foam discs or spun rollers mounted to the field's perimeter in an attempt to rack up the most points.

Everything is entirely constructed and coded by students.

The scene is a daily occurrence, controlled by seventh- and eighth-grade students Rylee Ball, Addison Frazier, Annabelle Jackson and Zarayiah Kemp, who have worked since August to perfect their robots during a daily robotics class. This year marks their introduction to robotics.

Once a month, the all-girl team takes on opponents at competitions and makes note of how it could improve for the next time.

"The robot we started with didn't have the ability to shoot, it didn't have the ability to turn these rollers. ... It's grown," said Tyler Herbst, the team's teacher and robotics coach alongside Brad Stamer. "They've gotten to the point where they're much more strategic with how they drive it."

The Grand Mountain team is one of three from Widefield School District 3 headed to the Colorado VEX Robotics Competition State Championships on March 4 following years of growing interest in the computer science program. Later that month they'll head to Iowa for the 2023 CREATE U.S. Open Robotics Championship, a regional competition.

The four-year-old school joins several others across the district in achieving Widefield's most successful competitive robotics season yet.

Four high school teams also qualified for the regional drone robotics championship in Flint, Mich., and three qualified for the regional drone championship in Houston.

"There's a really big emphasis on STEM and really all fields of CTE," Herbst said. "We have tons of support from our district."

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Widefield received increased support for its robotics efforts following the launch of nonprofit Pikes Peak Robotics about two years ago, co-founded by Widefield's coordinator of grants and STEM programming Nat Sobin.

PPR works with districts across the area, including District 49, Fountain-Fort Carson District 8 and Colorado Springs District 11, by building robotics programs and hosting competitions, Sobin said.

Some, like D-11's Coronado and Sabin high schools, had robust programs in place before the partnership, while others are able to lift their feet off the ground for the first time thanks to the nonprofit's work.

Widefield accounts for the largest number of teams out of any district partnered with PPR at 48, Sobin said.

Despite his affiliation with Widefield, Sobin said his motivations are not tied to his district winning or losing. Getting all students involved in robotics, no matter their school, is a win for the Colorado Springs community at large.

"What I go back to is I want the largest volume of students to go back and just get to experience robotics and coding to better understand a, its existence, and b, its applications," Sobin said. "Should they decide to choose a career in that, that's awesome, but if not, they still know it exists. It's a very powerful way of preparing our students."

Back at Grand Mountain, where the students have their sights set on their next big competition, the four-person team continues to tinker with its robot.

"Finding out that we made it to state was something that's really big here," Frazier said. "This is our first year."

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