Greenwood robotics students give demonstration, receive $5,000 contribution from TVA for program

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - Tuesday morning, students in the Greenwood High School Robotics Team received a $5,000 contribution from the TVA.

The grant will go towards helping the district purchase a VEX IQ robotics bundle and allow the team to take it to various elementary and middle schools in the district.

“We can let these guys and other groups take to other schools and work with our elementary and middle school students to get kind of them interested in and hooked on the computer science robotics part of education,” Matt Kresslein, the WCPS Digital Learning Coach, said, “We got this kit, and we’re gonna let them take it out on the road, and we’ll use it at the robotics competitions that we host at the district level.”

11th grader Anthony Clauson told WBKO he started his robotics journey at an early age.

“I learned of my elementary school’s Lego robotics program,” he said, “I like Legos and robots are kind of cool, I guess I’ll do that. It’s kind of just been this almost addiction since then I’ve been doing it; Sixth grade, the rest of middle school, and then now throughout high school.”

Last weekend, the team competed in a statewide FIRST Tech Challenge in Lexington.

It is a competition where the students are challenged to build, program, and operate robots in a head-to-head challenge with another team. In addition to designing and building robots, the teams raise funds, design and market their team brand, and do community outreach to earn awards.

“These kids really put in a lot of time and effort for their project,” Kresslein said, “They’ve been working on this for years.”

Clauson said his favorite part of robotics is the problem-solving portion of it.

“Thinking about every angle at which you can go at it until it’s solved... it’s like solving a Rubik’s Cube, and you just have like, the perfect colors on every side,” he said.

The team also gave a demonstration of their most recent robot and allowed members of the audience to try it out.

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