The robotics team had its final competition on Feb. 17 and had made it all the way to the semi-finals. They placed seventh out of 36 in that competition.

Computer science teacher Ryan Bowlen, who helps coach the team, said it would have been “amazing” to advance.

“I truly think that we have a shot at going to at least state next year,” he said. “The regional competition is really the killer as only four teams move on. … So that’s what hurt the most.”

In the past, the team went to a scrimmage and four other competitions.

“Everything on that robot that is done affects the programing, so with just one small change affects the whole robots programing,” head robotics coach Angela Crawford said.

While in its third competition, miscommunication was the team’s main problem when it came to making agreements over decisions. That issue would make them come in last place for that competition.

“We resolved that problem by chatting over an app called ‘Band’ where we would use it to make a decision by voting on whether if they agreeing or disagree on whatever they were going to change or do,” robotics captain Yazmine Rincon said.

Another one of their errors the team had was mechanical malfunctioning, but they were able to fix the robot if needed to.

The team had another chance to make it to the world’s competition, but was not selected after a random draw. Regardless, Crawford was proud of the work the team did.

“The team in our rookie year did remarkably well, we went beyond our expectations, and learned a lot,” Crawford said. “We’ve definitely picked up momentum to compete against some of the top-tier teams.”

UIL officially sanctioned robotics as a UIL academic event starting next year.