Robot team on to St. Louis

During the presentation, McKinney briefly explained how the program works and how Trout Lake accomplished its feat.

F.I.R.S.T Robotics programs give high school students the chance to work with very sophisticated technology under the guidance of experienced mentors, McKinney said.

He added, many of the country's most respected high-tech companies have funded the program, largely to develop interest in engineering -- and thereby refresh a decreasing pool of technical talent in the U.S. The Trout Lake team is sponsored by Insitu and Terry Schmid Sand and Gravel.

As rookies, Trout Lake's robotics team decided to focus on one skill in order to succeed in a competition based on alliances of three teams.

"After two very intense months of robot design and building (not to mention learning the very basics of how robots work) nightmarish software difficulties in the first two days of the competition tested the Trout Lake teams confidence," McKinney said.

Surrounded by 58 teams from six states and two countries -- and thousands of spectators -- a number of matches plagued by breakdowns and rookie errors had Trout Lake reeling.

"But the kids kept on learning and slowly started to show what a simple but very solid robot could do," he said.

Trout Lake moved from 52nd place to 37th in two matches with good offensive play, and began to be noticed (scouted) for the fact that its pole climbing "minibot" was one of the fastest and most reliable among the country's 2000 teams.

The competition is decided when the top eight seeded teams each select two additional teams to form the final alliances. Trout Lake was picked by two well established veteran teams to play defense for the initial segment of the games, but primarily to kick "bot" in the points-loaded final minibot race, McKinney said.

With Trout Lake's help, its the alliance never lost a match all the way through the double elimination two-hour epic finals.

"Like something out of the movie "Hoosiers" the "hicks" from Trout Lake won every minibot race but one, in which we took second," said McKinney.

"A number of teams had more kids than we have in our entire school. For a rookie team to make it to the world championships in St Louis is very rare," he noted.

In St. Louis, Trout Lake and its alliance will match up againt teams from all over the US, as well as more than 10 foreign countries.

Trout Lake's video is up on the web. Its bot is blue, 3711, the Iron Mustang.

For the game video go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT0xkWUpfe8 or search YouTube for "Trout Lake Robot" or "Iron Mustang."