He spent his summer doing something other students would fear: coming back to the school campus. He and his teammates snatched up every opportunity to get inside to prepare themselves for a year surrounded by “The RoboLobos.”

That grinding summer paid off as on April 19,  the team traveled to Houston to compete in a four-day long robotics championship held by “FIRST.”

Senior Austin Jia started planning out his future with computer science all the way back in middle school, when he took a Gateway class and was first introduced to Robotics, though he didn’t start his robotics career until junior year.

“I joined freshman year and didn’t really do much that year, it was more like seniors and juniors building the robot, I was kind of just in the room,” Jia said. “Sophomore year, COVID [happened] and I didn’t really come in as much and then junior year, we got more hands on and got to start building things and that was a really cool experience because we actually got to start doing stuff. We saw the other robots and they’re all super cool and wanted to do something like that this year and so we did, and we ended up doing really well.”

On March 24, the club traveled to Belton for their UIL state competition. The team ended up becoming the State Champions and were awarded with the Control award. To win this award, the team had to show how their robot was unique like their sensor usage and algorithm. 

“We competed in ‘FIRST,’ a Robotics organization, and they collaborate with UIL to name the state champion,” Jia said. “We competed in that alongside the actual robotics state level competitions, so we competed in two [competitions].  For the normal state competition, we didn’t win that, but we got the Control award so that advanced us to worlds. For UIL State, which was with other 5a schools, we did end up winning and that was really cool.”

Over the summer whenever a teacher would come in, some of the students would piggyback off of that teacher so they could go to their room and continue working. On occasion, the team would be in every day until 8 p.m. and other times, it would just be one day a week.

“We [didn’t expect to do this well] at all,” Jia said. “It kind of came with just putting in the time and it was really rewarding getting this far after you’ve put in that much time, knowing you can compete at that level. Last year, we never would have expected coming this far just because we didn’t do nearly as much. It wasn’t that we were incapable last year, it was just that we didn’t realize that we could do it. And we didn’t have the motivation to actually put it together, so that just came along in the off season.”

The competitions all year revolve around one game. Poles are spaced out inside a square field and cones are inside laying around. The objective is to have your robot pick up the cones and place them on the poles. The competition itself has two teams working against each other to beat the other two teams. 

“In our last match [at state], we did have some technical difficulties and it ended up breaking for that match, so we weren’t able to be the captain but we were selected,” Jia said. “Part of our wheel broke off, but we got it fixed. It’s kind of a complicated system.”

Having only seven people on the team last year and close to 30 this year, the team is looking forward to continuing this gaining popularity. Ms. Lovelace, the sponsor of the team, recently mentioned to her students that she has been looking into turning robotics into a class. However, students in the club don’t need to be required to join the class as well. Even though Jia will have already graduated next year, he still hopes for a future of Robotics at CPHS.

“I really hope [robotics turns into a class] because it’s eliminating a lot of people, like if they are in band or sports they can’t put in as much time,” Jia said. “They can still put in time, but they feel disconnected because the rest of the team has been meeting for a lot more than they have, so I think a class will let more people and feel more in tune with the team and hopefully attract more people to the club.”

Jia plans to attend The University of Texas of Austin and major in computer science. He hopes to continue robotics, but more on the mechanical side over the pure coding part.

“I’ve always been interested in building anything and computer science really,” Jia said. “I never was super into coding on a computer and like making webpages and stuff because that was kind of boring; I wanted to see it in real life. I’d like to do something more mechanical like programming industrial machines, like tractors. I don’t know, just something hands-on and retire