Celina Junior High robotics team makes it to state – Star Local Media

This year marked the first year for any school in Celina ISD to have a robotics team. Last weekend, the team, which is comprised of seventh and eighth grade students from Celina Junior High, traveled down to Austin for the statewide robotics competition.

The group is led by math and STEM teacher Walker Plagge. You can hear the pride in his voice when he talks about his students.

These are very intelligent students and very good problem-solvers, he said.

The state competition featured 60 teams from across Texas. The objective was to have the robot pick up wiffle balls. The team of five created a robot with color sensors that would be able to tell where the balls were. Unfortunately, their sensor was set to white, the standard for most wiffle balls, but the competition balls were orange. Despite the setback, Plagge said the students remained positive.

All in all, they walked away with their heads held high, he said. While the robot did not perform as we had planned, they still walked away knowing that what they had accomplished was amazing.

Even though they did not place in the top three, the fact that the team made it to state in its first year is quite the feat.

It was fun, Plagge said. It was a learning experience for them, and for this being their first year of having a STEM program, much less making it to a state competition, I think that theyre walking away feeling pretty accomplished.

Plagge is a Celina graduate. When he started teaching, he made it his goal to return and teach in Celina. When he was approached by John Mathews, assistant superintendent of administrative services, to start a STEM program at the junior high school, he jumped at the opportunity.

John Matthews knows that Im kind of a nerd, Plagge said. So he said, Ive got this idea. Why dont we start a STEM program and Ill give you a couple of STEM class and a budget, and you can run with it.

While the classes and robotics team is currently limited to the junior high school, Plagge said he is confident Celina ISD will do what it can to foster the learning started in seventh and eighth grades.

We want to make sure that their education with robotics and engineering doesnt stop here, he said.

The group also competed in the Collin County Betterment of Engineering Sciences and Technologies (CoCoBEST) competition. Plagge described this as a nine-week gauntlet with crowds akin to those at a high school football game. The competition doesnt stop at building a robot. Students have to make a booklet showing their processes, set up a booth and essentially create a mock-company based on the years theme.

Every time they bring their robots to competitions, they get oohs and ahhs from other schools that have been doing this for a long time, Plagge said. I think for our students it wasnt about how they could win, it was about what they could do to challenge themselves. It ended up putting them in state.

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Celina Junior High robotics team makes it to state - Star Local Media