Talk about saving the day.

Two days ago, Central High School’s celebrated robotics team, the RoboLancers, had to raise $35,000 if they wanted to go to the Robotic World Championships in St. Louis, Mo., next week. The team was one of two teams out of 122 in the mid-Atlantic region that qualified to go.

The RoboLancers launched a crowdfunding campaign, raising nearly $16,000 as of this writing, but it was Mayor Nutter’s call to Penn and Drexel that got them to their goal today. The two universities donated $20,000, the mayor just announced in a release.

You can still donate to the RoboLancers. The funds will be used for next year’s activities as well as outreach, said team coach Michael Johnson, who replaced longtime coach Dan Ueda last year. (Ueda now works at Penn’s GRASP lab.) The team doesn’t get any money from the School District and always raises its own budget. In past years, organizations like Comcast and NASA have sponsored the team.

This isn’t the first time the RoboLancers had to scramble to raise money to go to the championships. Two years ago was the first time that the team qualified for it and they had to raise $29,000 for the trip. They did so in five days.

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