GHS’ Robowranglers win Texas Cup | News

Greenville High School’s FIRST Robotics team, the Robowranglers, won the Texas Cup in San Antonio last week in their first live competition since March 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions ground their gears to a halt.

“This year was challenging for everyone, including the robotics community,” said Adrienne Emerson, the director of GISD’s robotics programs. “We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to compete in person, but when the opportunity presented itself, the entire team immediately was 148% committed to making sure we were at our best for the event.”

Due to remaining health precautions, team sizes had to be smaller to participate in the competition, so the Robowranglers divided into two teams, each using an identical robot, which was basically an upgraded version of the team’s 2020 competition robot, which they lovingly named Revolver.

Since the Spring 2020 semester, the Robowranglers have applied skills ranging from coding to engineering to graphic design in their development of Revolver for last/this year’s FIRST robotics challenge, titled “Infinite Recharge.” The game’s Star Wars-esque scenario has teams using their robots to collect power cells to get a force field generator working to protect a city from approaching asteroids.

“Since we only got to compete once the previous year before COVID hit, and the game has stayed the same, that gave us the opportunity to take some of the things we didn’t love about Revolver and tweak them,” Emerson said. “Then, since we were limited on the number of students who could be on one team, we divided our group into two teams and built a second robot that was just like the other one, so that more of our kids could compete.”

As it would turn out, the hard work the students on both teams put in paid off at the competition in San Antonio last week, as one of the Robowrangler teams came in first place and won the Texas Cup, and the other came in fifth place.

While it’s been more than two school years since the Robowranglers have had a chance to try for a fourth world championship, the team was more than happy to take their game to San Antonio last week.

“This year, more than ever, I am proud of the team accomplishments,” Emerson said. “Seeing them cheering after winning the final match made everything we endured this year worth it.”