Ravenwood High Robotics Wins First National Championship

From WCS inFocus

JROTC National Team pic and trophy
JROTC National Team pic and trophy (Photo by WCS)

Three Ravenwood High students are making history in the robotics world by bringing home the school’s first national championship title.

RHS students Mark Bell, Adwit Satyawadi and Connor Tasik claimed the Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps (JROTC) National Championship title in Dallas at the beginning of May. This is the first time that Ravenwood High has sent students to the national competition.

“Robotics at RHS started with JROTC,” said RHS Senior Army Instructor Rus Hayes. “The Army partnered with VEX to encourage more STEM-related activities in the JROTC world. We were sent a starter kit along with some funding, and I agreed to form a JROTC team. I then opened it up to the rest of the student body, and it grew rapidly.”

The team went undefeated in all its qualification matches and, in addition to competing in the JROTC National Championship, also competed in the VEX Robotics World Championship. In that competition, the students placed within the top 16 before being eliminated. The best 800 teams from around the world were present.

“This is a landmark achievement for the school, and it shows the caliber and the strength of what passionate, committed students can achieve,” said Pam Tasik, Connor’s mother and parent volunteer. “There is a lot of interest in robotics at RHS and the nearby middle schools, and this puts Ravenwood on the map for being a serious name worldwide for VEX robotics.”

At the competition, teams played the game Tipping Point, which required two teams to compete in each match, which included a 15-second autonomous period followed by a one-minute, 45-second driver-controlled period. The object of the game was to earn more points by scoring rings, moving mobile goals and elevating on platforms at the end of the match.