WildStang team advances to world championship

WildStang, the robotics team made up of students from Rolling Meadows, Prospect and Wheeling high schools, is on a roll.

For the second time this month, the 68 teens won a regional competition, building momentum as they head toward the world championships, slated to open April 27 in the Edward Jones Arena in St. Louis.

On Saturday, WildStang took first place at the Midwest Regional, held at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago. The squad led a field that included 52 teams from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, New Jersey, Texas, and Istanbul, Turkey.

Locally, teams represented Oswego and Batavia high schools as well as the Illinois Math and Science Academy in Aurora, but none of those was among the six teams selected to advance to the next level.

WildStang’s latest title came two weeks after winning the Wisconsin Regional, held in Milwaukee, when it won all 16 matches during the competition. At the Midwest Regional, it also won awards for excellence in engineering and for excellence in design, reflecting students’ strength in computer animation.

“We’re going to be strong contenders at the championships,” says Mark Koch, the team’s lead teacher and division head of Career and Technical Education at Rolling Meadows High School.

Since January, students have been preparing for the competition by building and programming their robot, working side by side with engineers from Motorola — their team’s sponsor — who serve as mentors.

“We have an experienced group of mentors and a huge group of very enthusiastic kids,” Koch adds. “Between the two of them, it’s going very well so far.”

During competition rounds, their nearly 6-foot-tall robot, operating on a 27-foot by 54-foot field with poles, earned points by hanging as many triangle, circle and square logo pieces as possible.

At each of its competitions, WildStang’s robot has emerged from the pack by scoring points autonomously based on preprogramming by team members during the round’s opening minutes.

Senior Alyssa Zielinski of Arlington Heights, a four-year WildStang member and one of seven girls on the team, said teamwork is the key to the students’ success.

“We’re divided into different sub-teams,” Zielinski says. “There’s the electrical, mechanical, and software sub-teams, and we all work on our separate areas during the competition.”

WildStang has a strong tradition in the 20 years of robotics competition, mounted by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. It won world championships in 2003 and 2009 and was named best overall team in 2006.

In St. Louis, WildStang expects to face nearly 350 teams out of the more than 2,000 high schools worldwide that compete.