The Lakota Robotics Team is soon to enter the 2024 competition season. Each year, on the first Saturday of January, the team is given a different game for their robot to compete in. From the day that the game is released to the date of the first tournament, the team gets 6 weeks to design, manufacture, and program a robot to compete in this year’s game.

Last season, the team made it to the world competition with their robot Nich Knack, named after the coach of the team, Jimmy Nichols, after winning the impact award, an award given to the team with the greatest impact on its local community.

Given how Lakota Robotics performed last year, the team has a lot to live up to and isn’t planning on being any less aggressive with their manufacturing and programming schedule for the upcoming season.

“I believe that this team will have an outstanding performance this season.” says Evan Grote, the team’s safety lead, “We have a promising team and multiple dedicated hard-working students.”

Since their last competition in April, the team has been in the off-season. In the off-season, the team primarily focuses on training and recruiting new members as well as advertising itself to new potential sponsors. This year, they’ve partnered with the Boys & Girls Club, volunteering to provide programs with stem opportunities to the community. They’ve also held many demos throughout the Butler County area.

The team has picked up many new members since they’ve gone into their off-season period, adding over 20 new students and mentors to its roster, the majority of whom being 7th and 8th graders. This influx of younger students creates a bright future for the team with the newer students having the opportunity to stay with the team up through their senior year of high school.

Next year’s season is sure to be competitive, with over 3,200 teams registered to compete across the world. Though the team did great last year, they have instituted a new structure for the team to operate under, giving more specialized roles to the members of the team and depending on the help of the coaches and mentors less. 

Though winning competitions and outperforming other teams is fun, the members of the team say that it’s not as much about competing and winning as it is about learning both hard and soft skills that they can apply in the real world. Gracious ProfessionalismⓇ, a term coined by First Robotics, the organization that the team runs through, is something that the team and it’s members heavily believe in. Gracious ProfessionalismⓇ is defined as the skill of staying competitive with those you are competing with while also lending a helping hand or cheering on your competitors.

The team’s website claims, “We build people by building robots.” 

Though it may seem like it’s hard to do as well as the team did last year, Lakota Robotics believes that they can do even better.