Pictured are members of the Red Bay High School Robotics Team: (front row, left to right) Ethan Pierce, Aeron Moor, Tate Ozbirn, Lexie Carnes, Reagan Kuykendall, Sydney Hardin, Morgan Pierce, Autumn Higginbottom, Kelly Miller, (second row, left to right) Kurtlan Hiser, Carlee Humphres, Jace Pounds, Ethan Mobley, Haley George, (third row, left to right) Anna Jackson, Taylor Cash, Darby Madden, Gath Weatherford, Levi Raper, (back row, left to right) Ethan Ray, Keslie Robbins, Taylor Brown, sponsor Greg Cash, sponsor Leah Torisky and Brooke Shotts.

By Brandi Miller for the FCT

The Red Bay High School robotics team is hitting the ground running this year. This is the second year for the RBHS robotics team, and the team has every intention of achieving this year’s goals.

“We want to do even better than we did last year,” said Leah Torisky, who sponsors the team along with Greg Cash, “and that would mean earning our spot at Auburn for the regional competition. This would be a huge accomplishment for a second-year team, but we think we have a great shot.”

The team began preparing for its ultimate goal of making it to regional competition by attending the Boosting Engineering and Science Technology training day held at Northwest-Shoals Community College, Shoals campus. The team attended to train and see the reveal of this year’s game course. The game for this year is titled “Bet the Farm.”

“The robotics kick-off was new to me, but I was excited to see what they had in store for us,” said first-year robotics member Lexie Carnes. “It was a long day, but I learned a lot of new stuff to help contribute to the team this year.”

Teammate Chase Allen agreed with Carnes. “The robotics meeting was a great experience, especially for the new members,” said Allen. “We learned what obstacles we have and got our supplies to build the robot and learned how they work. It was a lot of fun, and I’m glad to be in robotics.”

Now that the team has been able to see the game course, they will begin the process of preparing for competition. Torisky said the team will be preparing in many different ways. “We will be building the course to practice on, building a robot that can navigate and score points in the competition, programming the robot, designing T-shirts and spirit items for game day, preparing a marketing presentation and trade show booth and creating a costume and prepping the mascot, all for game day.

“We are so excited to compete again in this year’s BEST competition,” Torisky added. “The students really enjoy this competition and the challenges and rewards it brings.”

Game day will come Oct. 6. Then the team will begin on the Team America Rocketry Competition and finally the ROV competition, which is underwater robots.