Upstart High School Robotics Team Poised for Success

In just its second year, ’s robotics team has gone from newcomer to the competitive robotics world to state championship contender.

The team, under the guidance of physics teacher Matt Blackman, has come a long way in a short period of time.

“This is our second year, but we learned a lot in our first year,” said Blackman. “We have more money, more knowledge, more members and more experience.”

Funding for the team’s operations is coming from a variety of sources, including a grant from BASF Corp., a variety of private donors and support from the school district. Blackman stated that the team is also looking into receiving future funding from the Madison Education Foundation.

Not bad for an upstart team that held its first meetings just a little over a year ago in September, 2010.

“It was started by students who wanted a chance to build and learn how to do robotics,” said Blackman.

One of those students, Joe Kennedy, is perhaps responsible for the entire club’s existence. After attending the World Science Fair at New York University, Kennedy encountered some high school students from Edison who were part of an already-established robotics team. Intrigued, Kennedy gathered some friends and looked into what it would take to start a team in Madison, going so far as to write a letter and make a formal presentation on the idea to the .

“I saw it was easy to approach and set up for a school, so over the summer I attended workshops with my friends,” said Kennedy, a senior at Madison High School. “We went to a couple workshops, and I managed to get the pricing down and how the team would be set up for the school, so I wrote a formal letter to the Board of Education and the high school.”

The letter was well-received by all who read it, and soon enough, the team went from idea to reality.

“They were all for it, and then (MHS Principal Gregory Robertson) contacted me about being the advisor and it sounded great,” said Blackman.

Support from the school community has been unwavering ever since, but was perhaps at its strongest on the day before Madison’s appearance in the state championship qualifying meet at Livingston High School, where Madison took first place and earned the right to compete in the state championship on Feb. 13.

“The teachers have been extremely supportive,” said Blackman. “The day before our competition (at Livingston), 20 or so teachers all wore their Madison Robotics shirts. The kids were thrilled to see that support.”

To have come so far in such a small period of time is not lost on Kennedy, who noted a huge year-to-year difference in the team’s performance.

“It feels pretty awesome. Last year, at the state qualifier, we weren’t one of the top teams. We were able to get picked by an alliance captain, but we had some trouble as a first-year team working some kinks out,” said Kennedy. “We learned a lot last year, and we had some new incoming freshmen and some other new students (this year) who were very good. We stepped up a lot. For our state qualifier (this year), we were a second-place team, so we got to pick which teams allied with us and we blew through the whole tournament.”