By Nicole Thomas
Amid a deafening crowd ignited by the most competitive field in history – 20 teams from Mississippi and Tennessee – the SHS RoboJackets meshed the talents of 43 junior engineers to win their 4th straight state title in the 2015 MS BEST Robotics Championship at Mississippi State University on Saturday. In addition to the grand prize, SHS was awarded Best Marketing presentation and Most Robust Robot.
For the RoboJackets, six weeks of intense work to design, develop and test a robot culminated with the grueling 8 hour competition where servos, programming, and gears replaced slam dunks and three-pointers at Humphrey Coliseum during the 2015 MS BEST Game Day.
“SHS really knocked this one out of the park” remarked one judge after scoring the RoboJacket’s vendor exhibit.
RoboJackets’ coach Denise Adair agrees.
“We could not have won without Jamie Forrester, who captained our vendor exhibit construction crew,” said Adair.
Forrester is a fifth-year RoboJacket who has been on the team since its founding in 2011, It’s that kind of leadership that the team’s marketing coach April Dill hopes to build on with the addition of 25 new RoboJackets who joined the program this year from four different schools.
“Consolidation has strengthened our team considerably,” said Dill. “Our new team members bring a wealth of talents and skills to the robotics program.”
Next stop for the Robojackets: The South’s BEST Regional Robotics Championship in December at Auburn University.