(Left to right) Seniors Trent Slutzky and Marco Newman, juniors Sydney Gregg and Dylan Gavron, senior Charlie White, junior Ian Collins, science department teacher William Swain and math department teacher Marshall Chumley pose at Clayton State University at the state robotics competition. Though the team didn’t make it to the regional competition, they hope to next year with more developed team members. “Marco and Trent were the captains this year, and have a ton of outside experience. Hopefully they’ll be able to transfer that to the juniors,” Gavron said. Photo courtesy of Dylan Gavron.
By JOHANNA HALL – ODTV Executive Producer
Though the robotics team did not qualify for the south super regionals competition when competing at state, they look to next year in order to improve.
After qualifying at their second regional tournament on Jan. 28, the Clarke Central High School robotics team competed at Clayton State University in the Georgia FIRST Tech Challenge State Championship on Feb. 18.
From state, the team hoped to advance to the Georgia FIRST Tech Challenge South Super Regional competition. However, according to team members, they lost due to technical difficulties.
“This year we did a complete remodel before state, causing us to not have time to practice and perfect it,” robotics team member and junior Dylan Gavron said.
Because of the super regional competition’s location this year, Swain believed there was extra incentive to qualify.
“We made it to super regionals two years ago, almost made it to World. It was in Texas, San Antonio. We had to fly there. Now, it’s at (The Classic Center),” robotics team supervisor William Swain said. “That was our biggest expense (two years ago)–the airplane tickets, and it was crazy.”
Gavron hopes to prevent this uncertainty next year by keeping a consistent robot design and preparing members for leadership roles.
“Next year, we’re hopefully going to keep our designs between the competitions,” Gavron said. “Now, our main objective is to prepare the juniors on the team to be independent next year.”
The majority of the team is juniors, so after next year, Gavron hopes to recruit more people to keep the program
strong in the future.
“Our numbers seem to be dwindling. Two years ago we had around 20 people, next year we’re looking at around seven or eight,” Gavron said. “We want to increase our community outreach, getting middle and elementary students interested in robotics.”
The team focused on technical aspects of the robot this year, but Gavron says they hope to add creativity into the robot next year.
“So far we’ve pretty much only learned about robotics, we haven’t created anything independently and competed with it,” Gavron said. “Our big goal for next year is to make something we’re proud of.”
