The BB-R8ERS, the Upper School Robotics team, made school history after winning the Industrial Design Award in the Rocket City Regional competition and being regional finalists during the in Orlando and South Florida conferences.

“In the Orlando conference we went undefeated all the way up to the finals, which we have never done before. We then lost in the third match of the finals,” BB-R8ER junior Anya Krislav said. “It’s one of the best and hardest competitions, so I was really excited and super proud of our team.”

The beginning of their season started off with a prompt that got distributed in January to start brainstorming for the months that follow. The team then takes the steps to it down, analyze, discuss, and design the game to figure out how to succeed. 

“Scouting, spirit and strategy are a large part of the process for the team,” Robotics Director David Ellich said. “One of the main purposes of this program is to get students and just kids in general to work together. When you get out into the industry, you are going to be working with a team, and you have to learn to come together as one and respect other people’s ideas, even if they don’t align with yours.”

From January to the end of the season, they use the same robot and slightly tweak it during practices to make it better every day. The team then uses those adjustments to their advantage to the robot to the next competition they attend. 

“Before the Rocket City Regionals, we made an adjustment to our robot to make it sim autonomously which means it is able to use cameras to see targets,” BB-R8ER junior Joseph Buttrick said. “That definitely helped us to advance throughout the competition and place how we did.”

The BB-R8ERS are now in off-season, focusing their time on catching up on school work and finishing the academic year strong. Students who are interested in joining the BB-R8ERS can attend meetings that will be held towards the beginning of the school year, and can also contact Ellich at dellich@gulliverprep.org for more information.