SAN JOSE — Amid a valley of high school robotics royalty, a struggling team from the East Side’s Andrew Hill High School is emerging as a Cinderella story. But it hasn’t made it to the robotics ball — yet.

It needs money to get there first — and needs it fast — after winning a ticket to the FIRST Robotics World Championship in St. Louis, scheduled for April 21-25.

A year ago, the team was scrambling to find advisers, members and space on campus, and lost half its robot-building season just trying to get permission to use power tools. The team persevered but finished the qualification rounds of the Silicon Valley FIRST Robotics regional competitions earlier this month in 55th place out of 58 teams.

Then, with a bit of serendipity and aid from generous rival teams, its fortunes suddenly reversed. Andrew Hill was picked to team with robotics powerhouses Bellarmine College Preparatory and Davis High from Davis in an alliance that finished first and won a ticket to the championship.

Optimistically, the team shipped its robot Thursday. But members don’t know if they will be able to follow; it needs to raise at least $10,000 for 10 of its most active members to travel and stay in St. Louis. Other local robotics teams are rushing to raise funds too to the looming championship tournament.

“This was the last thing we expected,” said team captain Tina Nguyen, a senior. “We had a lot of issues this year.”

Andrew Hill, which draws from some of San Jose’s poorest neighborhoods, had no robotics team until Nguyen and alumnus Andy Nguyen (no relation) decided to start one in fall 2013. But it’s been an uphill battle.

They needed an adviser, but many teachers they first asked declined, saying they lacked the expertise or time. Their team space is a hallway accessible from several classrooms and used sometimes by others. They have no workshop — rooms were at a premium at Andrew Hill, Principal Bettina Lopez said — and few tools. They work only two days after school and built much of their robot on weekends in the robotics lab at Santa Teresa High, whose team took Event Horizon, as Andrew Hill’s team is known, under its wing.

“We’ve been in this position when we were a rookie team — it’s a pretty bad struggle,” Santa Teresa senior Rohan Phadte said. “Your robot would break, and you’d feel depressed.”

Tina Nguyen won grants to pay the $6,000 team fee and for equipment funding, and secured mentors by contacting the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The team collects no fees from students.

The FIRST tournament’s ethos — dubbed “coopertition” by program co-founder Woodie Flowers — has helped nurture Event Horizon, comprised of half girls and half boys.

“We have a culture of teams helping teams in FIRST programs,” said Karen Mahony, a volunteer judge and referee in FIRST tournaments, and a mentor to the Santa Teresa team. “In real life, engineers always work on teams and always have to help other teams accomplish their goals.”

It’s part of what attracted Tina Nguyen to robotics. “What I’ve noticed is people like to help each other out,” she said. The team at Leland High also has extended help. “I really wanted to build a robot. I’ve always liked creating things,” she said. But robotics is multidisciplinary: Students learn engineering and programming, as well as grant writing and networking.

“I just see these students grow by leaps and bounds,” said physics teacher and co-adviser Rick Sarringhaus. He thinks the six weeks they have to build their robot is as valuable as a whole year in any subject.

After its dispiriting ranking in the qualifying round, Andrew Hill was picked by Bellarmine — the top seed — to join its robotic alliance along with Davis, the No. 2 seed. Bellarmine happened to be assigned a site across the aisle from Andrew Hill and had scouted out its robot.

“It’s like if the Giants had come to a farm team and said, ‘Hey, we want to take you to the World Series,'”Š” Sarringhaus said.

It was a strategic move. This year’s FIRST challenge, “Recycle Rush,” requires robots to stack plastic tote boxes on top of a recycling can. Bellarmine’s strategy was not only to quickly stack the totes but also to grab the few recycling cans before its opponent could — all within a 2½ minute match.

“They had just the right shape robot and right attitude as a team, and managed to keep their robot running,” team mentor Jonathan David, a Qualcomm electronic engineer, said.

“It was a robust machine that was not going to break on the field and had the ability to be modified and improved,” said Andrew Torrance, president of Bellarmine’s Cheesy Poofs robotics team. Its partner, the Citrus Circuits from Davis High, had brought extendible hooks that could latch onto the recycling cans. Before the finals, the three teams worked feverishly to bolt the hooks onto the Andrew Hill robot and reprogram it.

“We had to remove parts without damaging the robot and edit code so the robot would do somewhat different functions,” Hill said.

They worked through the lunch break and relied on their partners’ two robots against opponents’ three in the first playoff matches because the hybrid machine wasn’t yet ready.

Then, in the final round, the hybrid robot and its teammates emerged triumphant.

The Davis team won the “Gracious Professionalism” award for its assist.

Now it’s on to the finals with 600 teams. “It’s the biggest nerd party you ever imagined,” said Mahony, a longtime robotics volunteer. “It is so incredibly cool.”

Bellarmine, which has made it to the finals every year in the team’s 17-year history, is sending 40 members of its 110-member robotics team to St. Louis, with most parents paying travel expenses.

Andrew Hill team members, meanwhile, are scouring the valley and hoping to collect enough to buy plane tickets.

Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/noguchionk12.