The Rolla Patriots Robotics team is celebrating their most recent victory after the State Competition in February. The team won second in the Inspiration Award, earning them a trip to the World Competition.

                The point of the competition is for each robot to gather racquetballs and put them in a crate, which they must lift as high as they can. They also have to take a bowling ball and drag it up a ramp, meanwhile other robots in the same arena are trying to do the same.

                “The teams are interviewed in a closed room.  The judges ask them all sorts of questions about the robot, their notebook, the fundraising, and the community outreach, etc.  Teams earn points for doing well in that.  Judges later intensely inspect the engineering notebook. Teams earn points for that,” sponsor Leigh Ann Tumbrink said.

                Although the team didn’t win in the competition the way they had hoped, they kept up a positive attitude.

                “At the very first round, we accidentally knocked over an opposing team’s stack of crates and racquetballs and were penalized seventy points. And during our fourth round, there was a glitch in the remote controls that our alliance team used, so both us and our partner lost control of our robot, which made them collide, pushing our arm system completely up. [This] eventually led to the arm mechanism falling off after the match was over,” Tumbrink said.

                During the awards assembly, a special announcement was made that ultimately worked in the favor of the Patriots.

“When the Inspire Award winner was announced, the commentator made the comment that instead of taking two teams to the World competition, there actually were going to be three spots,” Tumbrink said.

With the team being as new as it was and doing as poorly as they had had in the competition, they did not think that winning second in the Inspiration Award would matter at that point.

“[The lady in charge] pulled the team off to the side and told them, ‘You don’t know what this means, do you?  This means that you are going to have to come up with $1000 because you are going to Worlds.’  The Team came running back to the coaches and sponsors, screaming excitedly. As rookie coaches and mentors, we were shocked, stunned. I can’t describe the feeling,” Tumbrink said.