Monday was a special day for members of the Lockport High School robotics team.

For the last six weeks, the 38 students and 27 adult mentors on the robotics team have been working more than 40 hour weeks to design, program and construct a robot that will compete in the FIRST robotics competition.

On Monday, the robotics team, dubbed Warlocks 1507, unveiled its practice robot and performed a practice run.

"I'm genuinely proud of the work we've done," said junior Keirstan Farina, who was nominated for the FIRST Tech Challenge dean's list, as was student Nate Brick.

This year's challenge, called Steamworks, has teams compete in a simulated "airship race" in the tradition of steampunk a subgenre that incorporates technological and aesthetic designs of 19th-century industrial, steam-powered machinery.

The robot must collect "fuel" by gathering and firing balls into a nine-foot-tall, two-foot-wide basket and "install" gears by picking up and depositing large, lightweight gears. Once players have collected enough gears, they can begin turning their "ship's rotors."

At the end of the match, the players have the robots climb "aboard" the ship by ascending a rope.

During Tuesday's run, the Warlocks machine a two-foot-by-two-foot square box, painted blue and made mostly with aluminum succeeded in picking up and dropping off gears, and in climbing a rope fastened to a basketball net in the high school gymnasium. None of the balls it fired made the basket, but the team's programmers are working on that.

Three other, local FIRST robotics teams "The Circuit Stompers" of Newfane High School, "The Electric Mayhem" of Nichols High School and "Alumboti" of St. Joseph Collegiate Institute were invited, but none were able to attend on time; some needed additional time to work on their robots.

Robotics Team president Jim Rogowski said that the robotics team is about much more than building robots. It also does community service work and its primary focus is on teaching students engineering skills.

"It's a community based on kids learning real STEM technology," Rogowski said. "We're teaching kids how to do engineering."

After the competition's kick-off, Rogowski had the robotics team students break into different groups to brainstorm ideas. The groups then reconvene and selected the best ones; often they will combine the best ideas from various groups.

Then the team breaks up again into smaller teams, each with its own area of expertise: the computer-aided design team, the programming team, the electrical team, the build team, the website team and the public relations and award application team.

Together, over six weeks of long nights and all-day Saturday work marathons, the teams crafted the robot almost entirely from scratch. Almost every part except the motors and wheels were either constructed in the high school's shop or printed in a 3D printer.

"At first you can't fathom it's going to happen. When you get to this point, you can't believe we did this, we designed this, we put this together," Farina said.

Although, technically, they put it together twice. The Warlocks built their final robot, which they will use in the regional competition at Rochester Institute of Technology from March 16 to 18, and a practice one, which they used Monday.

Rokowski explained that once they have to submit their final robot, that's it. It's gone for about three weeks before the regional competition. Hence, the need for a robot that students can practice with until then.

"If our kids just sit around, they don't get an understanding of how to operate the robot," Rogowski said.

Should the Warlocks succeed at the regional match at RIT, they will go on to compete in the championships in St. Louis in late April.

Team members are excited for the opportunity. But it's more a labor of love and education than a quest to win.

"It's something I fell in love with. It helped me find what I want to do in life," said Farina, who plans to go into bio-engineering.

"We're the biggest family you could ever meet," she added.

Before the practice run, students and mentors heard from Mary Ward-Schiffert, chairwoman of UAW Local 686, and William Tiger, plant manager of the Lockport GM plant. Both GM and UAW sponsor the robotics team.

Tiger praised the FIRST robotics program for teaching engineering and STEM skills to the next generation.

"I feel good that the future is in your hands," Tiger said. "You're a lot further along than I was at that age."

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Lockport robotics team unveils creation - Lockport Union-Sun & Journal