The Clear Creek ISD Robonauts celebrate after winning the 2015 World Championship.
More than 18,000 students from around the globe traveled to St. Louis, Mo., to put their engineering skills to the test at the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship including a high school team representing Clear Creek ISD.
When the final competition was done April 25, CCISD’s Robonauts and their robot “Empire” along with their Alliance partners from Davis, Clovis, and Palmdale, Calif., won the coveted FIRST Robotics Competition Championship and were crowned Alliance World Champs.
This year’s challenge, “Recycle Rush,” was to build a robot that could lift boxes onto each other and top it off with a recycling bin while students tried to have their robot throw pool noodles at the opposing teams’ robots.
Competing Alliances scored points by stacking totes on scoring platforms, capping those stacks with recycling containers, and properly disposing of pool noodles, representing litter. The four-day event came down to a heart-pounding conclusion Saturday night in front of a roaring crowd of more than 40,000.
CCISD students and staff along with NASA-Johnson Space Center mentors worked late nights perfecting their winning strategy. The team with students from Clear Brook, Clear Creek, Clear Falls, Clear Lake and Clear Springs High Schools and Clear Horizons Early College High, pulled together with passion, enthusiasm, and vision. After being seeded first and winning the Newton division, the Robonauts headed into Einstein (final round) with teams 1678, the Citrus Circuits, 1671, the Buchanan Bird Brains, and 5012, the Gryffingears as alliance partners.
On arrival back home, Clear Creek ISD officials congratulated the Robonauts on “a fantastic season and for winning the 2015 World Championship.”
