The Rebound Rumble robotics game is played between two Alliances of three teams each. Each Alliance competes by trying to score as many of the basketballs in the hoops as possible during the 2-minute and 15-second match.

This is a game that the U. City Robotics club participated in at the regional games, which were held at the Chaifetz Arena at St. Louis University Thursday, March 21, Friday, March 22, and Saturday, March 23. Dave Sarber is the sponsor over the robotics club. He decided that he wanted to be the sponsor when his son started to get involved with robotics. This is his fourth year in FIRST and his third year in FRC.

Junior Grace Deitzler is the captain of the robotics team, and has been on the team since her freshman year. “It takes six weeks to build the robot but we study and learn about it year round,” said Deitzler.

Last year, the robotics club won the championship. Since the team is reappearing in the regional this year they are pretty much educated on what they can and can’t do in competition.

The most fascinating part of being in the robotics club to junior Marquise Williams is the fun, yet challenging part of building a robot. Williams thought that joining the club would be a good experience because he likes working with his hands and he first found out about the club through Walter Deitzler.

Building robots is only part of the competition. It also requires a $5,000 fee. The students raise this money through fundraising and getting money from different types of grants. After doing all of this work, students must still build robots, correct problems, and come up with new ideas.

At the end of regionals, students finally find out which teams make it to the championship. Even then, teams can still buy a wild card slot just in case they didn’t do so well which is another way to get chosen.

This year Sarber plans to have a more formal approach in the robot design, using better task prioritization and the usage of ranking techniques.