South's BEST Robotics Competition

We spent last weekend in beautiful Auburn, Alabama

with Austin competing in the South's BEST Regional

Robotics Competition.

BEST stands for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology.

They were in a field of 49 other schools

from as far north as Connecticut and as far

south as Florida. 

These kids were all given a box of parts and sent

out to build a robot that would perform certain tasks.

The kids worked for six weeks to get a robot built

and ready to compete at their local competition in hopes

to earn a spot to move on to the regionals.

Austin's team came in 3rd place at the local level

and then finished 8th out of 50 schools at the regional level.

Here is Austin going over the robot one last time

before he took his turn driving in the seeding rounds.

Out little team stayed in 1st place through almost all

of the seeding rounds and then moved on to the semi-finals.

All of the kids were so excited to be at the competition.

This is the fifth year that his school has had a robotics team,

and this was the first year they have made it to the regional competition.

This picture just made me laugh.

I caught Scott yawning during the "Pit Meeting"

before the competition began.

Austin's team are all of the students and mentors in the

green polo's.  Austin had just returned from the

Marketing presentation that they had to give for the competition

so he is still sporting his suit (minus the jacket...but he still looked pretty sharp!)

Here is another shot of Austin while he was out driving.

I was so nervous for him while he was out there,

and Scott could not be anywhere on the floor while he was driving.

Scott spent most of the time on the floor in the "Pit" during

the competition, except when Austin was driving... he said

he was too nervous and had to get away.  Austin never seemed nervous.

He was cool as a cucumber and drove like a champ.

Here is a shot of Austin with their robot

"ROVER"

which is an acronym for something that I can't remember.

ROVER posing with their two awards.

There are many different categories that

the kids compete for and they did

awesome for this being their first time at Regionals.

They can't wait to try again next year...