Highland robotics team, The Finger Tightans, prepare for state tournament this weekend

RIVERSIDE - Students staying after school to work on projects may sometimes be a rarity, but not so much for the Highland High School robotics team, The Finger Tightans. As they prepare for the state tournament on Friday, students are hard at work on more than just building a robot.

The Finger Tightans are one team overall with students divided into two teams: the engineering team and the business team. Matt Butler, a senior and member of the engineering team, explained the rules of the game.

Every year a new game is revealed. Teams then have to go to the drawing board to build a robot that will accomplish the task at hand. This year the objective is to build a robot that can stack blocks without knocking them over. The higher the tower, the more points, he said. The playing field is always the same size, a six foot by six foot square. The robot has to meet size requirements as it will compete in this space with other robots.

On Wednesday, the team was working on redesigning their existing robot to enhance its capabilities and better the teams chances of advancing. Butler said at the competition, the team will need to work together with another team to create an alliance.

'How the games works is there are two teams of two, called alliances. They go against each other so there will be a series of qualification matches through the day and the top 14 teams will pick captains so we have talked to two of the teams that are some of the better ones in the state to see what they would like to see from someone they would like to pick to be in their alliance when they start elimination matches,” he said.

Talking with other teams not helps the team in their quest to win individually, but with understanding what it will take to create a winning alliance.

In order to get to state, the parts for the robot and large fees have to be assessed. The business team comes into play here, said sophomore Jaden Schmid.

Schmid said members get together during their class period and also after school. The group has two separate categories to keep track of: finances and marketing.

On the finance side, members create a budget that will last the whole year. The funds go toward parts for the robots as well as money to go toward entering the competitions, he said.

Each competition the team enters has an entrance fee that can range from $250 to $3,000 for the world competition, which they are hoping to qualify for after state. At the beginning of the year, a budget of $6,000 is set and the marketing team gets to work helping fundraise the money, he said.

Emily Streb, a senior, said the work begins as soon as the school year does and once the budget is laid out. With five small meets, a league championship, super qualifier, state and world competition to pay for, this work is essential.

'At the beginning of the year we write out sponsor letters to anyone we can think of who owns a business and we ask them for mentors for either ourselves as a business team or for the engineering team and we ask for money as well, but we also do fundraisers,” she said.

Streb said being part of the team and looking forward to state and hopefully worlds is not just about team success but building skills for resumes in the future. In addition to team work and communication, she said each member can add presenting to their list of skills.

'We have to talk to each other a lot but we're also presenting in front of judges and lots of people we don't know,” she said, explaining they all take turns presenting in class in order to sharpen their skills.

That communication among each other and other teams will be put to the test on Friday, Feb. 28 and Saturday, Feb. 29 as the team competes in the state competition at DoubleTree in Cedar Rapids.

'This is one of those things where we want to make sure we are giving ourselves the best shot to advance and communicating with those other teams is the best way to do that,” Butler said.

Xavier Cooper, a freshman, will be attending the tournament for the first time this weekend. Cooper said in the short time he has been part of robotics, he had learned improved communication skills not only from having to talk with other students but with talking through technical terms as well.

Butler has been a member of the team for four years and is looking forward to attending the state tournament again and has a goal to set a president that will encourage the younger members of the team to continue the success after he graduates.

'I'll be gone next year but I want to give some of the underclassman the same experience I had so we can continue our success,” he said.