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CAPS home to Blue Valley FIRST Robotics

CAPS is home to Blue Valley FIRST Robotics

CAPS is home to Blue Valley FIRST Robotics team. The team consists of freshman to senior members from all five Blue Valley high schools. Some students participate in the robotics project during CAPS Engineering, while many simply come to meetings after school a few times a week. In the fall, our team built a new robot to compete in the Cowtown Throwdown competition. This pre-season competition uses the prior year challenge and is a chance to improve our robot from last year and to try new strategies. While we ultimately finished 31st out of 60 teams, we learned a lot to help us prepare for the build season to come. While Cowtown was fun, nothing compares to the intensity and fun of the build season. This year, we will be given our challenge for the robot on January 7th. Then on February 21st, just six and a half weeks later, we have to put our robot in a bag that we cannot open CAPS is home to Blue Valley FIRST Roboticsuntil our competitions in March. Due to the very short time period and the crazy amount of time we spend together (some of our members logged more than one hundred hours not including their time at CAPS), we bond a lot as a team. One of the greatest sources of this bonding is our team lunches on Saturday. Different families bring lunch each Saturday during build season which we all eat together in a family-style setting.

More than just a team, CAPS Robotics is a family

It is hard to imagine what my life would be like without robotics. I moved to Kansas right before my freshman year and joined the robotics team soon afterward. I made many new friends through robotics which made the transition a lot easier because the team was so accepting. Even at school outside of meetings, there were a few older members who would talk to me in the halls which also helped me feel like I fit in with the team. Because we have such a diverse team coming from several different schools, grades and backgrounds, I feel our team is very accepting toward new members which has created a family-like environment. I have made many bonds within the team that I would have otherwise not made. In addition, my participation in the team has shown me what I want to do with my life; now I know that I want to study computer science in college.

~ by Robotics team member Ryan Pope