Robotics Club wins first place in San Diego

By Kayla Samimi

Executive News Editor

The Green and Gold Gears, Mira Costa’s robotics club, won first place at its second tournament of the school year last weekend at Bishop High School in San Diego.

The club meets every day at lunch, during office hours and after school in computer science and robotics teacher Aaron Braskin’s room, where members design and build robots for upcoming competitions.

“The purpose of our club is to teach, educate, inform and program,” Green and Gold Gears President Jamie Krigsman said. “We want to teach our members the basic of robotics so they really understand it.”

Photos: Green and Gold Gears created its own robot and with it, won first place at its first competition of the school year.

The San Diego competition was the Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s first win since the creation of the club and class two years ago, Green and Gold Gears Treasurer and sophomore Genevieve Paraszczuk said.

“We were very happy with the results of the competition,” Paraszczuk said. “It felt great to know that we were the first robotics team in the district to win.”

A total of 29 high school and middle school robotics teams from across the world attended last weekend’s competition.

In the competition, two teams faced two other teams. In order to win, a team must construct a robot that has the ability to throw various stars and cubes over a fence onto the opponent’s side, a challenge known as “Starstruck.” The team with the least objects on its side at the end of the round advances to the next round.

Link: Read about the creators of the “Starstruck” challenge, VEX Robotics

“Our main goal is to create a robot that can successfully throw over a variety of stars and cubs,” club member and freshman Kevin Sabbe said. “This year, our robot was able to pick up objects and then drop them over.”

Green and Gold Gears is hosting its next competition in May, where the Manhattan Beach Middle School Robotics Club and the Costa Intro to Robotics Class will compete against each other.

Link: View a full list of upcoming robotics competitions

“For this competition [at Costa], I designed a new challenge that the robots will complete,” Krigsman said. “I am excited for how it will end up going.”