Centre County 4-H Robotics primed and ready for competition
Jan 29, 2025

STATE COLLEGE- One of the best kept secrets in local sports might not be your usual one when you think of the local sports scene. 

The team has been starting to make a name for itself through local channels and has been quite a successful program since its inception since 2012.

During its time, the group of youths from all over Centre and MIfflin Counties have won numerous awards, received National recognition for their work, and even won a Global Championship in 2018. 

The group is called Centre County 4-H Robotics (www.cc4hrobotics.org) and they compete on a global stage through their participation in FIRST Robotics  (www.firstinspires.org) competitions. The locals are taking sports into the next generation using STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) as their sport’s gear.

These group of young men and women are creating a new category of sports using their intellectual prowess and their competitive spirit in a sport that combines teamwork, spirited efforts, problem solving and the proper preparation, all the basics of a successful sports program. It is also the skills in robotics, a fairly new sporting event, that has team’s designing, developing, problem solving and programming their robotic creations to compete en route to the State, Regional, and GlobalChampionships.

The team’s season is now in full force as they plan and prep to create a robot that will compete in a set of initiatives they have to complete and also going up against other teams at the same time.

On January 4th, the Centre County 4-H Robotics high school division officially started the clock ticking on this year’s competition. The group kicked off its season with a FIRST’s global reveal of the 2025 game challenge and the theme of this year’s competition. A simulation of the competition challenge can be viewed here (www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc/game-and-season).

The group met with Penn State’s “Robot in Three Days” group of engineers to help guide the younger athletes in the right direction by building a prototype for the high school group to learn from look at and measure brainstorm their design ideas.

From now until March, the high school division meets locally in State College and will design, manufacture, assemble, and program a new robot from scratch, and then start to practice for their Regional competitions in Pittsburgh and New York City. If they win one of their Regionals, they will qualify to attend the world Championship competition in Houston TX in April.

The theme of this year’s competition is Reef Scape. 

The team has to design a robot that will be able to lift a ball into an overhead bin while also being able to raise itself up onto a cage structure. They score pointsaccording to their speed and ability to accomplish those fetes. 

The designers use Computer-aided design (CAD) programs to design objects in 2D and 3D. They also program the nerve center of the robot using JAVA programming language that allows the robot to operate autonomously and with human teleoperated controls.

In competition, the robot will be piloted by a group of 4 students. The competition consists of 2 teams of 3 robots competing against one another on a field as large as a high school basketball court. Competition is much like a tennis tournament where teams compete through a series of playoff eliminations until the final two teams of 3 robots meet and compete for the event championship.

Although the sport is similar to many traditional sports, it is unique in its use of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) to build the competing robots.

So it’s a lot more than sports, and great competition for kids of all ages.

The group has three different divisions, one for elementary, middle and high school age students. This year, the middle school’s State Championship event will be hosted by Centre County 4-H Robotics club and will be held at the Bellefonte High School on March 8-9. Anyone interested in learning more about this sport (or even volunteering at the event itself) is welcome to attend and experience the excitement of robotics competition. Learn more or volunteer by visiting the club’s website at www.cc4hrobotics.org/ftcchamps.

The Centre County 4-H Robotics club lead Mentor, Bill Jester, enjoys shaping future innovators by offering a progression from LEGO robots for younger kids to 120-pound custom-designed robots for high schoolers, preparing them for future careers in STEM and beyond while learning technical skills like programming and engineering, as well as leadership and teamwork.

The group is always looking for interested students that would like to join the group. Also, the group are always looking for sponsors to help support the group in its ability help the group function and as a support of the future of the group.

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