Robotics leaders hope championship win helps grow interest in STEM
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Last week, 22 students from McCutcheon High School in Lafayette boarded a plane to Texas and returned home as world champions.
FIRST Team 4272: Maverick Robotics was one of 12 Indiana high school teams that qualified to compete in the FIRST Robotics World Championship. Maverick is the first Indiana team to bring home the win in 21 years.
Students build, program and drive a robot, which must complete specific tasks during a match. More than 600 teams from around the world competed at the event, which ended with a best-out-of-three finals competition.
The team lost the first match but won the second and third.
“We got in a little huddle and got in a position [where] we could watch the [score] screen come up,” Charlie Baxter, drive team coach, said. “I’m 35 years old. I’ve never been through anything like that in my life before—to have confetti cannons going off and everybody’s just screaming.”
Ashley Robbins, executive director of FIRST Indiana Robotics, watched the competition from the bleachers alongside several other Indiana teams.
“That best of three is tough, right? That first loss, you just feel it. You feel that hope maybe start to wane a little bit, and it was really magic to see that second round win, and then that third one,” she said. “I can see three teams from across where we’re sitting, and they’re screaming for this team, and they’re so excited. It wasn’t just that the McCutcheon team is excited; it’s that every kid in that building from Indiana felt so representative and so excited for that team. That, I think, was really powerful.”
Statewide growth and career development
Chris Osborne, director of programs for FIRST Robotics, says FIRST aims to connect industry leaders with students.
“These teams run like businesses. Their product, of course, is this highly competitive, amazing robot they build, but along the way, the real secret of our program is preparing kids for what’s next,” Osborne said. “This is a mentoring program.”
Robbins says the high school program has seen 30-40% growth over the last two years.
Baxter is a research engineer at Bloomington-based Cook Medical and says companies can see an advantage from students who participate in robotics.
“As an engineer working in a STEM field, we have interns and co-ops come through all the time and consistently, students who have been involved in this program are better contributors than their peers are,” Baxter said. “They have more practical skills that they can apply when they come to us in the workforce, they get on their feet faster, and it’s something that we’ve started to look for as we start to do recruitment.”
Victory celebration
Fellow students, teachers and community members greeted the team with signs and cheering when they arrived back in Lafayette.
“At around seven o’clock on Easter we managed to have about 150 people there,” Zach McKeever, lead mentor for the team, said. “The kids loved it. They were surprised…they got a lot of videos and memories that will last a long time.”
FIRST Indiana Robotics hopes the win leads to STEM outreach and more knowledge about robotics programs.
“This can be such a passion area for youth, and there’s a space for everyone to participate and get involved. We’re happy to help drive that across the state,” Robbins said.
“We had schools like Shoals High School in Shoals, Indiana…all the way up to Carmel High School attending the world championship. Our program has a lot of leveling the playing field built into it for teams from all size communities and all size resources,” Osborne said.