Top ranked high school robotics team returns home

SALT LAKE CITY, UT (ABC 4 NEWS) – Utah’s top ranked high school robotics team JudgeMent Call Robotics FRC Team 5933 returned home Sunday.

It’s after competing in the Houston World Championships in Texas.

The team came in 12th place with a record seven wins and three losses.

“About 400 teams showed up,” said Jon Hall, head coach & team mentor. “You should see a roomful the size of the Houston Astrodome of parents and supporters and coaches and mentors, staff cheering on these kids.”

Hall accompanied 17 of the team’s members to Texas to compete.

The students who participated included Erica Strand, the team’s president.

“We have worked for six weeks to build our robot who is Lieutenant Ripley.”

The premise behind building the robot was based on a 120-page competition rule book.  The drive towards completing and them competing with it now has members ranked among the best including teams they previously looked up to.

“It’s really exciting to know that for so long we’ve looked up to all of these teams that win,” said Strand. “We’ve been like ‘Oh, my God. They do so much for STEM.’ Then here we are competing against them, beating them and then becoming one of them. This year when we came on, and we just took over. We were the #1 Utah ranked team, and when we actually went to Worlds there were four or five Utah teams and we out of all of them had the highest ranking at the end of everything.”

The team says competing is about so much more than robotics. Members say they’re learning public speaking, how to fundraise as well as how to effectively work together towards a common goal.