By: Michelle Kim

Photography by: Sean Brown

The crowd is roaring, hands in the air, shouting out their team names with pride. Robots shuffle through the arena, doing anything from picking up gears to shooting balls. The atmosphere is filled with excitement as the clock starts ticking down, the drivers racing their robots across the field. The match is tied, 250-250, each team cheering from the stands, hoping that their team wins. The timer hits 30 seconds, a loud buzzer fills the room, ropes are dropped from each alliance. Drivers race to their ropes desperately climbing to hit the button. Another buzzer fills the room, the match has ended. Everyone looks up at the board for the final score. “RED ALLIANCE TAKES THE LEAD!” The crowd roars with joy.

FRC stands for FIRST Robotics Competition; it is an organization dedicated to inspire young kids interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). It helps robotics teams around world compete in competitions and  test their robot-making abilities. It’s a wonderful community in which FIRST encourages young girls and boys to test their STEM abilities. FIRST has an array of competitions ranging from Lego League Jr. to Robotics Competitions. (quote)

Every year, FIRST holds a yearly competition for teams from around the world. Each team has 6 weeks to build a robot that matches the play style or how the way each match works. This year was Steamworks, so the robots had to pick up gears, balls and even climb a rope. Every yearly competition is uniquely themed and has a different ways of playing each game/match.

Team 167, Children of the Corn, is an FRC robotics team in Iowa City, and is the 167th oldest team in the world out of over 6000 teams. This means that it has been around for a very long time and has experience with robotics. “ Any student from West High School and South High School can join the team. People come together to create robots, socialize, and learn how to work as a team. Team 167 is a majority of West High students and have had many accomplishments in the past. (quote) Team 167 had won (The trophy and year) (another quote)

This year was an interesting year for team 167, they went to 2 regionals where everyone had a good time. In the first regional, they went to the Iowa Regional and they placed 12th going into the quarter finals. In the second regional, the team went to La Crosse, Wisconsin, for the Seven Rivers Regional where they placed 19th and sadly didn’t get into the quarter finals. Both regionals were fun and full of exciting new things to explore. Students get to learn social and communications skills by talking to other teams to get information about their robots in the Pit. The Pit is a place where all the teams gather and each team have their own booths, these booths are where the Pit crew can fix up the robot if something goes wrong.

Even though team 167 didn’t get into the final rounds, they still had a great robotics year. Children of the Corn are still going around doing outreach opportunities and are planning for their summer camps. The team is working hard to introduce more kids to STEM and maybe even they can be interested in a STEM related job in the future.