Claremore Robotics Team Moves On to Championships by Staying Cool

Chris Howell NewsOn6.com

Claremore -- Students from Claremore High School learned some valuable lessons at the FIRST Robotics Regional Competition in Oklahoma City over the weekend.  

Each team built a robot designed to pick up balls and put them in competing robots' trays.

But the first round didn't go so well for the Claremore team.  A broken wire stopped its robot for the entire round.

The team members kept their heads and fixed the problem, moving on to success in further rounds.

The competition also measured attitude.  The judges noticed their professionalism under fire and gave them a Rookie All-Star Award.

"Kind of disappointing when our robot didn't work the first couple of times, but it was very rewarding and very exciting to see it working, and actually working with other teams," said student Heidi Stair.

"Gracious professionalism is one of the key things that FIRST Robotics is trying to achieve, where you want to win but you want to help your opponent do as well as they can do also," said Teacher David Isenbart.

Because of that gracious professionalism, the Claremore team will be able to proceed to the FIRST Robotics Championships in Atlanta in April.