With so much talent in the robotics club this year, club leader and physics teacher, Mr. Clay Conn, decided to split the students into two teams. Each team was asked to design and program a robot to compete in the First Tech Challenge (FTC).

This year, the FTC was designed around an original game called Cascade Effect. The object of the game was to get as many balls as possible into three different sized cylinders. The team with the most points at the end of the match won the game. The success of a team depends on the skill of the team members, the robot’s design, and the programming.

The robot must be able to perform in autonomous mode and driver controlled mode. In autonomous mode, team members have no physical control over the machine, and the robot will do only what it is programed to do. In driver controlled mode, the students operate the robot by remote.

On November 8, 2014 Prep competed in Greenville, Mississippi where they qualified for the next competition in Jackson on January 10, 2015. At the Jackson competition, each team played roughly six games of Cascade Effect a day, eliminating opponents from the competition as they moved closer to the finals. Eventually, both Prep teams had to play against each other, and one, unfortunately, eliminated the other.

At the competition, collectively, the teams won the Rockwell Collins innovator award and the PTC design award.

After competition season is over, the robotics club takes its robots to places like the Neighborhood Christian Center and the Children’s Museum to show the kids how the robots work. At the beginning of each new season last year’s robots are taken apart and their parts are recycled in the construction of a new robot.