The robotics team Sprockets and Screws placed 22nd at the Illinois FIRST Tech state competition in Elgin on Feb. 24-25 and will not proceed to the World Championship.

  After qualifying at the regional competition, the team of seven seniors worked for three weeks to make improvements to their robot before facing the other 37 teams. At state, two members of the WeByte team, which did not advance to state, attended to learn from and support the Sprockets and Screws team members.

“With the matches, I think we did as well as we could have with all of the changes we had to make in the three weeks in between competitions,” senior Nico Ahmed said. “This is our team’s last season, and this was the first time we’ve gotten to stay overnight, so it was nice to have the full experience of a state competition.”

Reflecting on the results, coach Darren Fuller believes this competition reinforced the essential role of perseverance in the team’s engineering process.

“This competition reminded us there is always room to improve something, whether that’s a mechanism on the robot or communication amongst the team or the driving of the robot,” Mr. Fuller said. “It’s all about just continuing to push forward and find ways to get better.”