This year, girls at Apollo High School hit the VEX Robotics team by storm after senior Arnold Rodriguez was the only person to sign up for the team. That’s when advisor and CTE Tech teacher, Dr. Matt Keil stepped in.
Keil noticed Madeleine Schoenecker hanging out in the hallway after school. He approached her and asked if she would be interested in joining the robotics team.
“She was open to the idea,” explains Keil. “So, she joined and then started to tell her friends about it.”
That’s when juniors Kalasia Howard, Mercedes Bartels, Kayli Qual and Fatima Al Fareh joined the team.
The six became the 2019 robotics team. The girls quickly jumped in to help veteran Rodriguez put their robot, Baby Bot, together and get ready for competition.
The process is all about trial and error.
“We’ve had to put it [Baby Bot] together so many times,” laughs Schoenecker. “We were all new to making this robot, so we all had to learn everything from scratch. We didn’t know how to do anything before.”
Schoenecker and her team discovered how hard and difficult it can be to start from the beginning. They also had to be very creative. They weren’t always able to get the parts they needed due to cost and budget.
At their first robotics competition, the number of participants and spectators surprised the girls. The competition didn’t go well for the team, but they learned a lot and mined ideas to rebuild Baby Bot for the next competition.
“We were so unprepared,” remembers Howard, “but we learned from it.”
Within a couple of competitions, the team finished in the top five and made it to finals.
Now the team is confident and ready for upcoming competitions.
“I think it’s really fun,” says Schoenecker. “It takes a lot of teamwork. It’s a really good experience. I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Qual and Al Fareh were interested in engineering careers already. The robotics team feels like a stepping stone in the right direction for them.
Qual says, “I feel like we have a better understanding of what we want to do with our lives now.”
With a new design of Baby Bot, the crew is anxious for upcoming tournaments. When the season wraps up, Rodriguez (the only senior) will graduate. He will leave an all-female team that is set to compete next year.
And that’s all right with these young women. They are ready.
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