When senior Carter Stahly looks back at his teammates on Seaman High’s robotics team, he sees an opportunity to build a winning culture.
In just its fifth year, the fledgling program has been able to grow alongside a broader surge in interest across Kansas schools for robotics. Physics teacher and team advisor Donald Koon said he struggled to fill two teams of three or four students a piece when he first started the team to compete against about 50 others across the state.
Now there are about 200 teams competing, with new robotics programs all across the state. Granted, a fraction of those teams competed this year given the pandemic, Koon said, but interest remains high, especially among the students who have found a creative outlet in the extracurricular when so many other traditional school activities have been put on pause.