The Black and White

by Will McColl

After about four months of preparation, the robotics team won second place out of almost thirty in the January 11th compitition. The team consisted of Kelvin Olea, Harry Castillo Solares, John Wazilewski, Charlotte Williamson, Christian Sevilla, Jacob Scott, Kaleb Hagen, Noah Kenney, Aden Deal, Jayden DiMauro, and Jacob Campell.  The team has been learning and using their 3d modeling, 3d printing, coding, and assembling skills to create the greatest and most glorious robot Pilgrim High has seen.

 The Pilgrim High School Robotics team, known as the “Sons of Liberty”, advanced and will be going to the state competition. The rounds are split into two parts, one autonomous round, in which the robot has to do its task off of a line of code for thirty seconds,  and the manual round where the robot is controlled with a remote. The autonomous section scores double the points compared to the controlled rounds and points are scored when the robot successfully move objects into bins and/or clamp the objects on bars.

The team had a rough start with the first few rounds as the robot was overloading and it simply could not keep up with the other teams’ robots. Harry Castillo Solares, the lead builder of the team, noticed he was being shocked by the robot. That’s when Mr. West, the teacher and director for the team, noticed there was a pin in the robot that was broken. The team pulled out the pin and the robot was off to the races with an amazing comeback! The robot and the robotics team breezed through after that. For the final, the team paired up with Toll Gate to go against two other schools.

 The room and team have a very warm and welcoming atmosphere. Mr. West said “We have had students really come out of their shell… it’s really like a family in here, a lot of people say it’s like a second family… we have a lot of fun. Sometimes we even eat together!” In the Advanced robotics class, which allows you to be on the team, you learn many skills. Noah Kenney, one of the 3d modelers and designers for the team,  said “I made more friends in this club and I learned more skills which really influenced me and what I want to do for a career.” The lead coder, Kelvin Olea, said “I’ve really enjoyed this club a lot! We laugh quite a lot… It’s really fun! We wrote to so many local companies for fundraising… We have learned the more economic sides of life as well.”. 

Join Advanced robotics if you want to learn a lot in a fun and friendly setting. The next competition will be soon on February 8th. Congratulations to the Pilgrim Robotics team on states. You made the school proud!