In April the Greendale Robotics team, Graffiti, won the Engineering Inspiration Award as a rookie team at the Seven Regional Tournament. They had a very successful competition and this award qualified them to travel to Houston to participate in the World Championship where they won the second highest judged award: Rookie All-Star Award.

The team had worked very hard all season and their hard work paid off. “My favorite part of the trip was winning the Rookie All-Star award which is given to the best rookie team. This was a huge honor for our team,” senior Megan Volkening said.

Principle Steve Lodes chaperoned the students on their trip to Texas. “Robotics offers two types of opportunity: the STEM experience of building and continuously re-creating and engineering a robot, and also a business side that includes promotion, outreach, marketing, and presenting,” he said.

With only six Rookie All-Star Awards given around the world, Lodes appreciated the hard work these students put in. “I was able to be immersed in something I was not familiar with, and met some great students and adults on a deeper level,” he said.

The Robotics Team has five main areas with each student focusing on one or two areas of their choice. These areas include mechanical, programming, electrical, CAD and business. “These groups communicate with one another and work together to ensure we reach our goals. We set a lot of well thought out goals and our leadership team makes a timeline for each week of the season,” Volkening said. “We also did a lot of team building activities, especially towards the beginning of the season to help us get closer as a team, as we are from all different grades and most of us didn’t know each other to start the season.”

The team has undercovered many challenges throughout their season. “Growing as a program involves recruiting more students and mentors to help sustain our team in the future. Why I personally joined the robotics team however is because all my life I have been very interested in technology and innovation,” reshmen Matthew Jozwiak said. 

With their very strong season this year, the robotics team has high expectations for next year’s season seeing how they can progress further as a team.