Carson High Brobots win robot competition

Despite their inexperience, members of Carson High School's Brobots team captured the crown during Saturday's robotics competition, the Northern Nevada FIRST Tech Challenge Championship, at Carson High School.

"That is insane," said Dee Frewert, director of education and development for Space Science in Schools. "This is a rookie team that has maybe three months' experience. They beat out teams that have been doing this for nine years."

During the Bowled Over competition, teams faced off against one another on a 12-by-12-foot, diamond-shaped field. Each team's robot was given a series of assignments such as moving balls and stacking crates. Each task was assigned a point value.

Carson High School's Brobots amassed the most points, winning the competition.

NOVA, from Folsom, Calif., won the Inspire Award for overall excellence in all categories and will also advance to the World Festival, also known as the Super Bowl of Smarts, April 25-28 in St. Louis.

Silver State Charter High School's RoboMagic won the Rookie of the Year award.

"It was actually a whole learning experience," said Nicole Vargas, 14, a Silver State freshman. "It's just been trial and error. We ran out of funding about two months ago, so we used what we had to the best of our ability."

Brobots coach Adam Whatley said the competition had real-world implications.

"This is the future," he said. "Our students will be competing with the rest of the world as engineers and scientists. This is the support mechanism for that."