Conifer High School’s robotics, Team Blitz 2083, finished in the top eight out of about 40 teams in Colorado last year and is now hoping to compete in world finals. Making improvements by learning from their past mistakes, and having more resources in order to ensure the best chance for winning.
Hannah Stauffer is the mechanical captain of the team, and has the team focusing on improving precision and efficiency in manufacturing aided by upgraded machinery and increased team size.
“More specifically, we are trying to be more precise in our measuring and our manufacturing process and be a lot more efficient in our assembly. So far, we have been able to do that due to our upgraded machinery and training and whatnot, and this year, we’ve got a lot more members, we’ve been able to learn and grow and do things a lot faster as well,” Stauffer said.
(Waylon Keane)
Teamwork is very important in the robotics club and is one of the most important aspects of being a member. “A good work ethic and the ability to show up every day and just be working, be grinding away, and get stuff done,” Assembly Lead, Micha Kipp, said.
Mia Vaughn, the organizational officer, has been working in the club for 3 years now. She has trained new members and helped in the organizational aspects of the club, hoping to make it better than it was before. “Honestly, in the past, we’ve been pretty disorganized. After COVID, we were down to like seven members who are here all the time, and so just building that into something that we can actually build a robot with,” Vaughn said.
Teamwork is a big part of the success of Team Blitz and their ability to build robots to accomplish tasks. “Doesn’t matter what kind of technical skills you have if you’re not able to communicate and work together with others,” Vaughn said.
(Waylon Keane)
With being so close last year to the world finals, the team is both excited and confident in their abilities this year to achieve the goal of competing with teams from across the world. “I think that goal is very achievable, especially going off of our standing last year. We were inches away from the finals and we’re in the top eight in Colorado out of 40ish teams,” Kipp said.
Teamwork and collaboration have helped them become a stronger team as well as be able to make workloads easier for all sections of the team. With competitions quickly approaching, the team is kicking their building and design into high gear in hopes of doing better than the years before. “We’ve grown so much. We’ve quadrupled our members, we’ve tripled our budget. People are learning how to do things such as prototyping, becoming more connected to the community of first that we have across the world and the state which is a huge resource for us,” Stauffer said.
