The RoboTAG team from the School for the Talented and Gifted won first place in the State Farm Exhibit and Interview Award in the 2020 Texas BEST and UIL Robotics State Championships!
The fifth annual UIL State Championship – BEST Robotics Division was held virtually Nov. 30–Dec. 12. The championship was open to high school teams competing in BEST Robotics who are members of Texas’ University Interscholastic League (UIL).
On the team’s competition website, RoboTAG said one of the key points of their brand is promoting diversity.
“At RoboTAG, our team has a mix of everything: new ideas, detailed models, and great kindness, all stemming from our rich diversity,” the team website says. “It’s a safe space for all kinds of thinkers to come together and work on a fun project where we can get involved and think outside the box.”
The members of the winning RoboTAG team, which is led by team sponsor Eric Strong, are:
Victoria Fasakin – Team Co-captain
Angela Nguyen – Team Co-captain
Aditya Behre
Akshee Chopra
Coulaj Eans
Benjamin Hernandez
William Liu
Katherine Lopez
Franklin Noble
Alejandra Salazar
Jessica Sanchez
Karthik Swaminathan
Nina Ude
Victoria Valdez
Leodan Villegas
On the team website, RoboTAG also talks about how they had the opportunity to introduce elementary kids to coding on code.org.
“Watching them discover new themes, concepts and career paths made us reflect upon our own elementary school experiences and how they might’ve been affected if we had had access to coding as these kids did,” Katherine Lopez said. “It really made us realize how important it is to educate children now while we still can because it can give them an entirely new perspective which they may not have been exposed to otherwise. It’s also really enriching for us, students belonging to an older generation, to create opportunities for the younger generations based on what we wish that we had been exposed to.”
