With a week-old robot made from scrap parts, the Robotics Team managed to come in ninth at a tournament at Havre de Grace on Feb. 9.

There were 13 teams in the tournament, made up of private, public, and homeschooled students.

“There have been two robots. The first robot we’ve been using… got trashed last competition because it got ripped to shreds. We used the trash from that one and built the entire robot in a week. This is the new and improved one,” junior Austin Schap said.

Even with a fully functional robot, the team ran into difficulties during the first half of the competition. The software they were using to control the robot didn’t connect properly, but they attached a new ID tag to the robot and managed to do “much, much better,” scoring “about 4 times as many points,” according to Schap.

“It started out bad, they had a lot of software issues,” Robotics Team moderator Jorge Picquer said, “but they worked through lunch and did much better the second half, which I think makes it a success.”

This marks the end of the tournaments for JC, unless they are invited to States.

Martha Schick is the Multimedia Chief for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.