BUTTE — If at first you don’t succeed, try again. The Robolution Robotics team made of students from both Anaconda and Butte High are proof that idea works.
Last year the group was brand new to robotics competition. It placed 36 out of 37 teams. This year the team won the INSPIRE Award for being the best example of what robotics teams are all about. For that honor the team is headed to the world competition in Houston in April.
Kaden Dean a junior at Butte High, and Caleb Thompson a senior from Anaconda talked live with Montana This Morning’s Chet Layman Thursday morning about the team. Both say they’ve learned much from working with the 8-person team from two high schools, and are excited about the trip to Houston. While they will travel as a team, part of the world competition requires a two-person effort where team members will be paired up with a person from another team. That means they could be working with students from any of the 70 countries being represented at the event in Houston.
The team is made up of five Anaconda High School students: Caleb Thompson, Liam Barrington, Will Griffis, Jaiden Connors, and Farabeth Barrington, as well as two students from Butte High School: Kaden Dean and Aaliyah Andersch. The team is coached by Carlton Nelson, an Anaconda High School teacher, who has spent the last ten years working for Upward Bound as a summer instructor and now serves as the after-school robotics coach. The team is mentored by Montana Tech students, Justin Bak and Emily Maynard.
The team is asking for community support to travel to Houston for the FIRST Championship Competition. For more information, please visit https://impact.mtech.edu/project/19260.
