Prairie High School’s robotics team competed, on Friday, March 8th, and Saturday, March 9th, in the last tournament before regionals, coming in 2nd out of 28 teams and securing their place in the regional tournament over spring break.

The tournaments consist of picking up and shooting foam rings into a ceiling-high ‘goal’, then hooking on a chain and pulling itself off of the ground. Playing 3 v. 3 with different companions each game, teams work to climb the ladder with ranking points.

Coming in 1st was S.E.R.T, South Eugene Robotics Team, who, “steamrolled a lot of people,” says Todd Ferris, CTE teacher and Robotics coach for Prairie High School on March 14th at 7:22 AM. S.E.R.T. beat our team twice in a row, both times by just a hair. The CloverBots plan on improving efficiency by making “Rammstein”, this year’s bot named after a heavy metal band, require less precision in order to cut time from required actions.

A new bot is made every year, with different rules for construction and a different theme, this year’s being music. Each year the robotics team needs 20K-25K in order to compete, all funding currently comes from outside donations. During the primary season, the team is meeting 3 times a week along with traveling to competitions many weekends. Ferris hopes for the District to support this school team better.  “Where’s the display case for academic trophies?… some of the displayed athletic trophies are from the 1980s,” Ferris adds he wants the District to help, “take a step towards making these academic teams the ‘cool thing’ to do.”

“If you win things, you get more attention,” Ferris remarks. Highlighting academic achievements in the school will create an elevated appreciation to academics currently not had. Those in extracurriculars, no matter if they are a sport or not, deserve recognition.