ARLEY, Ala. – Meek High School recently formed their very first robotics team as a part of the program FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a global initiative that was founded by Dean Kamen as a method of engaging students in exciting, mentor-based robotics programs. There areteams in 110 countries. Meek will be one of the first local teams to start a FIRST robotics program. Meek robotics team mentor and Coach Jojo Owens said that out of Cullman, Winston and Walker counties, “we’re the only school that has a team out of those three counties that’s at this level.” Jojo presented the idea of the robotics program on the 21st of January to introduce the program to the 9-12 graders. The team already has 18 members.
Owens said, “It’s something totally different the kids have never been exposed to before.” The team will be spending the next seven weeks building a robot in preparation for the Rocket City Regional Robotics Competition at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville on April 6-9. The team will meet in a designated robotics room at 5:30 p.m. two days a week for at least two hours and meet for six hours on Saturdays.
The Meek High School Champions are a rookie team, starting out this year with the help of Ft. Payne team Gigawatts mentored by Jamie McClung. A few members of the Gigawatts team visited Meek High School on Saturday for a build day to help mentor the new team. The Ft. Payne team has been competing for four years. McClung stated, “We love coming and helping teams that are brand new get started.”
There are several awards to be won at the competition including awards specific to rookie teams. Some awards to be won are for safety, design and team spirit. One of the most important factors of the competitions are that students from different schools often must work together in competitions fostering collaboration and teamwork rather than competitiveness. Owens says, “Working together is a lot better than running each other down and knocking each other out.” Winning is a secondary achievement for students to the overall experience.
Next year, Meek will start their programs at an even younger level than 9th grade with the elementary students. The different levels of the FIRST program are FIRST Lego League which is for grades PreK-8, FIRST Tech Challenge for grades 7-12 and FIRST Robotics Competition for grades 9-12. Requirements for FIRST teams can be found at https://www.firstinspires.org/.
Owens says, “We can start with the very youngest students next year, get them enrolled, get the team started for them, so when they get to high school, they’ll be ready even more so for this level. That’s the whole goal, is to inspire and provide students with opportunities that they would’ve never known about.”
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