Building robots and competing throughout the country with teams from around the world, Ridgebotics members dedicate their time to learning to program, coding, fundraising, and communicating with local businesses. Organizing into teams, each member is given a different job to aid the team in functioning.

Through Ridgebotics members learn important life skills including business, mechanics, and programming. Similar to a real business, Ridgebotics fund raises $40,000 yearly, often sponsored by local businesses, in order to build robots, planning many events such as last year’s Silent Auction.

Senior, Co-Captain, and Business Lead Camille Ko, who has been part of Ridgebotics for two years, communicated with local businesses to collect donated items for said auction, in which they also showed off their robot.

Ko claimed that through her involvement in Ridgebotics she has “learned to get better at public speaking, time management, and been able to learn more about business.” Most importantly, she said that being in the organization has allowed her to grow in an environment where she can be herself. She views Ridgebotics to be like a second family to her and thanks to her team members support and love she has grown in confidence. 

Additionally, she believes Ridgebotics to be a welcoming space in which people can enter with no prior knowledge and exit having learned new skills and made new friends. Speaking to Mr. Beavens who is sponsoring Ridgebotics for his first time this year, as well as teaching with Robotics 1, Metals, and Art Engineering, he expressed his excitement to be involved. He believes Ridgebotics to be exceptionally valuable because it provides students opportunities to learn how to use their hands to build robots, problem solve, and gain skills in programming and engineering, which are vital in a world that is creeping closer and closer to automation. Another perk he discussed was the opportunity to travel, citing past trips to Utah, Denver, and Houston for competitions. 

Currently looking for new members, Ridgebotics meets after school on Mondays and Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. 

Correction: The meeting dates have been altered since the publication of this article, and were edited to reflect that change.