By Jamie Swinnerton, Staff writer

From left to right, Diego Zarur, Stone Meng, Mateo Martinez and Lauren Hamel practice driving their robot at The Woodlands High School, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. The Woodlands High School will be competing in state finals in Dallas on March 14, 2020.

From left to right, Diego Zarur, Stone Meng, Mateo Martinez and Lauren Hamel practice driving their robot at The Woodlands High School, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. The Woodlands High School will be competing in

Photo: Gustavo Huerta, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer

From left to right, Diego Zarur, Stone Meng, Mateo Martinez and Lauren Hamel practice driving their robot at The Woodlands High School, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. The Woodlands High School will be competing in state finals in Dallas on March 14, 2020.

From left to right, Diego Zarur, Stone Meng, Mateo Martinez and Lauren Hamel practice driving their robot at The Woodlands High School, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2020. The Woodlands High School will be competing in

Conroe ISD robotics teams heading to state finals competition

The future is here, and Conroe ISD students are ready and eager to be a part of it. This year, two robotics teams from the district will be heading to the state competition on March 14 in Dallas and are hoping to work together.

Caney Creek High School and The Woodlands High School robotics teams will both be competing later this month at the FIRST Tech Challenge UIL State Championship competition. What theyre hoping for is the opportunity for an alliance. They spent Wednesday afternoon running through the set task with both robots, learning how the other team works and how they may be bale to work together.

Being able to work together in the competition is not a guarantee, but if they do get paired together theyll be ready.

The Woodlands High School final team is an amalgamation of five different teams that started at the beginning of the school year. Now, the best parts of all teams have come together to form team Rigatoni Pastabots. Come competition day, 15 students will be traveling to Dallas. most of the members are students in the robotics class, but some are just members of the club, or too young to take the class.

This is the first year for the robotics class at TWHS, and the second year for the robotics team on campus. Before forming a campus team interested students used to have to travel to College Park High School to participate in their team.

Its something The Woodlands has always tried to do but we struggled to get kids to do robotics because they had to go somewhere else to do it, said Lauren Hamel, a science teacher at TWHS and the team sponsor. Hamel was the one who lobbied to get the robotics class at TWHS.

Anything above district level competitions gets funding through the district, but before that the team was on their own, raising funds mostly through sponsorships (including a grant from Google).

Ignacio Gonzalez, a senior at TWHS, joined his sophomore year after looking for more activities to get involved with. This year, hes President of the team.

It wasnt a very big club at that point, we had about eight members on a good day, he said. I stayed because I thought the team had potential.

Gonzalez said that some of the design, construction, and coding for the robot they are taking to states is his. But his favorite part is driving. After graduation he wants to major in computer or electrical engineering and plans on continuing to work with robots, a plan solidified by joining the team.

Matthew Kozlowski was one of the main programmers for the team and had been interested in robotics and programming before he joined. He saw the team as a good way to put those skills to the test in a real-world situation. Its a much more involved process than he had been expecting. He estimates that he spends somewhere between 15 and 30 hours a week programming.

I thought it would be very simple, you know, just tell the robot to go forward, he said. Theres a lot of stuff that has to occur at the same time.

Its not just robotics that all competing teams have to work on. along with building a robot, the team has to create presentations and marketing materials for their robot and team. For TWHS, those materials were created by team member Jennifer OConnell. She started working on the robot but transitioned to brand management, and created all of the art for the team.

We needed someone to do the notebook and have art for the team because we couldnt get sponsors without having a good image and a good presence within the community, she said.

Her favorite part is going to the competitions and seeing the whole team come together to work on the robot.

This will be Caney Creeks second time heading to states, their first time being the 2017-18 school year when they came back with second place. This years team is made up of four seniors. For Darren Lindon Kelley, the teams main programmer, this isnt something he plans on quitting anytime soon.

We half joke about just going into the Battlebots thing after this, or just making bots for fun, either one, really, he said.

After graduation he plans on studying computer science. his advice for anyone interested in joining robotics is to get involved before your senior year, unless you join a college team no one will be paying for it after that.

Shemar Allen-Thomas got into robotics because his friends were participating, and like Gonzalez his favorite part is driving the robot.

Its amazing, especially when you get to build it from random parts and see how it works, he said.

While he doesnt plan on going into computer science or engineering after graduation (he wants to become a police officer some day), he can see himself working on robots as a hobby.

This is Caney Creek robotics teacher Angela Crawfords third year with the team. Each year the competition gets tougher, she said, but her team has kept their eye on the prize.

I cant say enough about these guys, she said. We struggled a lot during the regular season but these guys did not let it get the best of them. They kept moving forward.

jamie.swinnerton@chron.com

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Conroe ISD robotics teams heading to state finals competition - Chron