Saturday, May 11, 2024
Granbury High School has an after-school robotics program made up of nine different teams that compete in different tournaments. The program is coached by Bethany Smith and Michelle Hunsinger of Granbury High School.
The nine teams include three Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (MCJROTC) teams, three high school teams, one high school unified team and two middle school teams.
Competitions are comprised of three different categories including game play, engineering notebooks and interviews. Each team must maintain a detailed engineering notebook that describes its design progress, challenges, solutions to problems, photos and advancements, which are judged at each tournament. Teams are interviewed about their notebook, robot and the entire process they have endured as a team. Lastly, team members compete on the field against other teams to determine who will walk away as tournament champion.
Each year a new “game” is revealed for the next school year during the world competition in May. The game is changed enough so no robot built the year prior can be used the following year. As soon as the game is revealed, teams begin working to figure out what type of robot they will need to make. They even work through the summer to prepare for the next year's season. The robot is built and programmed from the ground up. Four different programs are needed: two autonomous and two driver modes.
In the recent VEX Robotics Harmony School of Innovation competition on Dec. 2, one GHS team even qualified for the University Interscholastic Leage (UIL) State Competition. The team members include Marcus Hadaway, Zac Layland, Rhyan Obina and Renee Sermarini.
This team is no stranger to the spotlight as in previous years they have qualified two times for Nationals and made it to the finals one year.
“I am extremely excited and feel very confident about our ability to compete against the other teams,” Obina said. “Regardless of if we come home empty handed or not, it will be a really good learning experience for all of us.”
Lt. Col. Scott Casey, senior Marine instructor at GHS, expressed pride in the team's hard work and dedication since the last competition.
“They worked tirelessly on weekends and even during Thanksgiving break to prepare for the event,” Casey said.
Coaches Hunsinger and Smith both commented on the team’s dedication and comradery noting members have even built a workshop off campus and spent countless hours working on their own time.
Hadaway, Layland, Obina and Sermarini will compete in the UIL State Competition Feb. 5-7 in Houston.
