In the landscape of basketball and bowling championships and swimming qualifications, another New Richmond High School team quietly made history.

Sophomores William Swart, Jordan Shuck, Brandon Gibson, and Charles Stammen are students in NRHS teacher Alan Lindner’s Robotics II class and members of the school’s new competitive robotics team. On Feb. 15 the team became the first to represent NRHS in a robotics competition.

They hoped to win at least one match at the competition. They far exceeded their expectations winning 10th place out of 32 teams.

Throughout this school year, the friends and teammates designed, constructed, programmed, and learned to operate a robot. All of their work was in preparation for the VEX Robotics Competition at Milford High School.

To say the students were nervous the days prior to the big event is an understatement. They were also hopeful.

Swart, the official team spokesman, said ahead of the competition that no matter the outcome, the team would experience success just going out there and seeing what they can do.

It’s a point he drove home at the New Richmond Board of Education meeting Feb. 18 when the Board recognized the team. Swart added that he and the team were happy with the outcome of the Feb. 15 competition.

Shuck is the team’s driver guiding the robot with controls. He said it’s weird to think that the team is the first to represent NRHS in a robotics competition with a robot of their own design.

“We designed and we did everything to compete against other people who have done this,” he said.

During Tuesday’s Board meeting, Shuck explained how the robot worked and described the competition.

VEX Competitions are STEM-focused and task participants with designing and building a robot to play against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. The objective of the Feb 15 competition was to attain a higher score than the opposing Alliance by placing cubes in towers and scoring cubes in goal zones.

Charles Stammen is the key robot engineer. He was nervous in the days leading up to the competition.

From the experience, he said he hopes to gain a better understanding of robotics for a possible future career.

Brandon Gibson is the team programmer. One of his primary responsibilities is writing the code for the robot’s 15-second autonomous task.

This competition was a great opportunity to learn, he said.

Gibson and his teammates hope their involvement in the robotics competition might increase interest in NRHS’s robotics class and, ultimately, help grow the team.

Team expansion is an idea embraced by Mr. Lindner who hopes for an even “bigger and badder” robot next year.

“And maybe next year there will be two competitions we can go to,” he said.