A great showing and a big win over the weekend for Lincoln High School’s rookie robotics team.
The Steel Stingers placed 21st out of 50 high school teams from around the country at the 18th Annual San Diego FIRST Robotics Competition presented by Qualcomm.
They brought home the Rookie All-Star trophy.
The Lincoln team has already qualified to go to the world championships in Houston next month, and coach Jeremiah Jeffries said Monday that there will be some additional preparation for that competition.
“It's really just adding vision, adding some more processing, some more programming. We know our bot is sufficient; it scores just as quick as the other bots do. So now it's just adding the icing on the cake," said Jeffries.
It was a significant showing for the team of 13 students who are only in their first year of national competition.
Jeffries said the team's high placing and win was accomplished over other teams with more resources.
"Our kids at Lincoln are facing adversity," he said. "These are experiences that a lot of our kids don't normally get when we're competing against these other schools — that’s normal stuff for (them). I mean, this is the dream for my kids to see themselves at their full potential.”
The coach mentioned that for many of his students, the trip to Houston would be their first time out of state and traveling on an airplane.
"Our kids at Lincoln are facing adversity. These are experiences that a lot of our kids don't normally get when we're competing against these other schools — that’s normal stuff for (them). I mean, this is the dream for my kids to see themselves at their full potential.”Jeremiah Jeffries, Coach Lincoln High Steel Stingers robotics team
Approximately 1,500 high school students from across San Diego County and as far away as Hawaii and the Middle East participated.
During the competition, the student teams used their personally designed and constructed robots play a game in which they retrieve pieces to try to score points and play defense against other robots.
