The end of the year for Rolla High School’s robotics teams is a time for reflection and planning. RHS’s multiple robotics teams had varying levels of success this year, although sometimes the success required hasty preparations all the way up until the championship. For now, the teams are preparing for next season’s competition.
“So right now, we’re actually working on outreach. There was a science event at S&T on the 14th of May. And we’re building a robot for the kids to drive. Because they’re young kids, we call it the hug bot. Basically, it’s a robot with four wheels and goes up and just hugs kids. For the a little bit older kids, they also got to build an airplane and they get to shoot it against our robot and see which one goes farther,” FTC team 6168 captain John Tumbrink explained.
The fundraising events and outreach will continue until the beginning of next year’s season. One team’s leader is exploring his role as captain and growing in his leadership skills.
“I’m the team captain and also [the] lead mechanical. For my team captain role, I basically delegate tasks to my team. I keep them on task, I give them tasks, and I make sure everyone knows what they’re doing. That also leads into my mechanical lead role. In the team captain side, it’s for the whole entire team trying to make sure everyone has a place and is comfortable with what you’re doing. For the mechanical team side, it’s making sure everyone on the mechanical team knows what they’re doing and is confident and doing it by themselves without me watching over them. After my senior year, it’s all up to them to do stuff and take over my role, so I have to give them all of my knowledge before I graduate next year,” Tumbrink said.
Ethan Bodenhamer, the lead programmer for another team, agrees that directing his robotics team has developed his leadership skills.
“I like robotics just kind of since a lot of my friends I have…are in robotics as well. And so it’s kind of a…hangout space for me, as well as solving problems, and improving problem solving skills as well as kind of leadership skills,” Bodenhamer said.
Being part of the robotics team not only improves such skills but also forms and strengthens bonds with the other members of the team. As this year’s seniors graduate, and leave gaps in their group, Bodenhamer is eager to meet new young teammates.
“Next year, I want to improve our recruiting methods. We’re struggling a bit with recruiting new people, as well as just generally kind of improving upon skills that we have. One of the major things we struggle with is retaining information between years because the senior members graduate, and they know a lot of stuff. And then we have a lot of trouble passing down the information that the seniors know on to new members. That’s a struggle, so we’ll often lose information between years. Being able to pass down information is something that we’re working on a lot,” Bodenhamer said.
Tumbrink also has fond memories with the team he leads, and looks forward to the next robotics season.
“I like sitting with the team and discussing certain things and what we should build. That’s almost my favorite part is after the challenge comes out. We get the video, you get to see everything, and then we all group together and we get to talk about okay I like this idea. Your idea. Everyone comes together even if they’re on the mechanical team, they always talk and we all talk about ‘okay, I like this idea for this thing. Maybe we can combine it with this thing.’ But then my favorite part is actually building those ideas and figuring out which will work and if they do work when they work with other things and not just by themselves,” Tumbrink said.
Both Tumbrink and Bodenhamer advise students to join a robotics team if possible.
“Yes, I would highly, highly, recommend that. Even if you aren’t interested in mechanical, there’s still a ton of other stuff you can do. From marketing, to design, to fundraising, and lots of stuff like that. There’s also speech skills, because you have to go in front of a panel of judges and present your robot, so it helps with public speaking. There’s a lot of skills that are involved,” Bodenhamer said.
