On October 12, the Big Lake High School Robotics Team, 6709 SPUD Inc., hosted an end-of-season competition for local robotics teams, the Central Minnesota Conference Championship. In addition, they were a part of the winning coalition consisting of Big Lake, Becker, and ROCORI teams. 

The Big Lake High School gymnasium served as a performance stage for 24 local teams to show off their amazing robots. The students on these teams were charged with building robots that could fetch disks, similar to frisbees, and shoot them into a target. For bonus points, the robots were also programmed to be able to climb up off the ground onto a pole at the end of the match. Teams were judged according to how well their machines performed at the assigned tasks. 

Robotics is a year-long sport, and teams will soon be given the tasks their robots will need to be able to complete to compete in next year’s competitions. 

While this competition does not determine any rankings, as the world competition was completed earlier in the year, it did serve as a final hurrah for the local teams before the new season.