Bored after school with nothing to do? No interest in sports or any other extracurriculars? Join a club!

Although COVID-19 has introduced some hard-to-handle change, there are no shortage of clubs here at Sahuaro, and they are currently up and running.

Presenting… the Robotics Club…a club for those who are interested in robotics and the learning of robots. The club is focused on the building of student’s own robots that they will be able to use for the annual tournament.

“I think what made me join robotics was the coding aspect of it. I’ve always been a coding nerd since I can remember and learning that I can code something to move and do what I want just sparked my interest. Plus, being able to build my own robot with help from my team – the way we want it to be – based on the game, just sounds so amazing,” says Senior, L Sigars. This is Sigars’ second year in the club, and are thrilled to compete in their final year of school.

This year the club, run by Mr. Davis and Mr. Christian, is participating in a game called Tipping Point and will begin to learn the scoring and eventual building of robots for that game. The aim of the game is to get more points than the other team, with two robots per team. The aim is to build an efficient enough robot to do the tasks needed and end the match balanced on their elevated platform. For more information on exactly how the game works, VEX Robotics uploaded an instruction video for this year’s match.

The teachers running this show are very excited for this upcoming year. Due to the pandemic and online schooling last year, the club was unable to participate in the tournament, so they are more than ready for this year’s challenge.

Sahuaro’s engineering teacher Mr. Davis, who began this club about 6 years ago now, spoke about the past years and enthusiasm for this coming year. He said, “I dove right in when given the opportunity to start this club. We’ve been growing teams since the beginning, and are pretty excited to see how far we can get.” Both he and Mr. Christian have already shown great anticipation for this upcoming year, and there couldn’t be a better duo for the challenge.

The club is still pretty early in the production process, with them just finishing up their second official meeting on Tuesday, September 14th. With this knowledge, showing up to a meeting as soon as you can is your best bet. They are still in the introduction stage, creating tentative teams and brainstorming the kinds of robots they want to make, but will soon begin their building and final teams.

Meetings are every Tuesday and Thursday at 3:30 pm after school. If you have any interest at all, anyone is welcome to pop in and say hello! They are extremely welcoming to newcomers, and who knows, maybe you’ll find your passion among robotics.