Due to hard work and a lot of effort CCISD robotics team have qualified for World Championships in April. Excited and surprised the robotics team, The Robonauts, won the Dallas Regional competition.

“This competition was the hardest competition for the season. We played the game this year. It’s called Recycle Rush, where you have to stack these containers on top of each other. The stack of containers is about eighty inches, so it’s really, really tall. We had to stack these containers and basically your score is based on how many containers you can store in a match, just about two minutes long,” Marcus Isnard, a member on a team, said.

The team had six weeks to build a robot. Sometimes, students need to finish their final design during the competition. Also students have some other responsibilities.

“It’s a lot of fun. We go there and it’s not just about a robot. We talk about how we affected our community, and how we improved peoples’ lives. We show a video. They gave as a speech. Our team has done how science is spread in society,” Nathan Buchanen said.

The victory in Dallas was the biggest surprise even for The Robonauts. Despite a lot of obstacles, the members on a team faced with, they managed to win Dallas contest.

“We came from on Thursday really having a ton of problems,“ Marcus Isnard said.

Right in the middle of the competition the robot lost one of the wheels. Although, the Robonauts overcame a lot of troubles, they didn’t give up. According to Robonaut, Santosh Balachandra, there are experts who are extremely professional and can fix all sorts of problems in a very short period of time. However, not only the height of the construction was a barrier against the victory.

“Well, a lot of things were going wrong with our robot, and that was stressful for everyone, and everybody stands, happen to see, our stack almost fall over, it was really stressful, “Christine Ryan said.

However,   the Robonauts students enjoyed facing   a  challenge.

“Competition was always probably my favorite part. There are a lot of challenging aspects, getting permission to the row constantly ready. Also you get to interact with a lot of other kids from around country, who are all interested at the same thing, as you, and make a lot of friends there. It’s really fun,” Ethan Sizelove said.

When asked how it felt to win, student Christine Ryan answered with a big smile.

“Awesome. I didn’t think we gonna win at first, because our other allience that was opposing us was really, really good,” Christine Ryan said.

The brightest moment for Sizelove was receiving a blue banner. After a weekend of constant stress and excitement students felt happiness and relief. For some of them it is a last year on a team.

“For me, it was really shaking the judges’ hands and receiving the award, because it was really tough. I mean we go through four days of competition with getting three hours of sleep, going to bed at one, waking up at four, so just getting that moment with my teammates fully got award and getting medals, that really get along to, especially, as I am a senior this year. I’ve done three years, so this is my last year. Really getting to stand up in front of thousands of people and getting my award with my teammates was absolutely great,” Marcus Isnard said.

The robotics club is a great experience, which helps with a future careeer. The purpose of it according to Nathan Buchanen, is to spread use of math and science throughout the society.

“It’s to get kids into environment, where they can be working not only on developing their STEM education skills, but in a STEM related work environment. We get to go to NASA and work with NASA mentors. It gives us a really tense on experience with engineering in general,” Ethan Sizelove said.