THE ONLY THING more impressive than the Blocker Middle School duo of Alana Lee and Dirara Tsikis winning the middle school national championship at the Skills USA meet in Louisville, KY late last month was how they accomplished the feat.
Competing in the Urban Search and Rescue Competition, Lee and Tsikis started off on the wrong foot as they lost one of their robot’s wheel. Undaunted, the duo successfully worked their way through the contest, winning in a time of 4:12, a time that defeated a majority of high school teams in the six-minute challenge.
“My stomach just sank. I just thought, ‘oh, no,’” said Dana Lee, Alana’s mother. “She couldn’t get up the ramp and it started losing its balance, so I thought, ‘that’s it, we’re done.’ When she found out the wheel had come off, Diara was right there as a solid partner, saying ‘we got this. We can do it. Even with all the obstacles, they did it.”
Winning the performance run was just a portion of the competition. Lee and Tsikis were also required to put together a notebook, do a series of interviews and two written tests which were each graded separately.
This was the first year that either student had been involved in the Texas City ISD robotics program, which has evolved into one of the state’s premier departments since its inception in 2014. The district is planning to expand the program in the 2018-19 school year by offering it to fourth and fifth graders.
“It’s pretty exciting,” said Tsikis. “It’s cool because it’s the first time I’ve done it and I went this far.”
The pairing of Blocker Middle School teacher Stacy Richardson and volunteer teacher Harvey Cappel helped set the foundation for the success of the program, allowing the students to adjust despite the trying challenge that came from the younger students working with the more seasoned high schoolers.
“At first, it was kind of intimidating because we didn’t know what we were doing,” said Alana Lee, “but they taught us the basics of everything. When we came here (to Texas City High School), it was more about preparing for competition.”
“We knew from the beginning that we had a very great class because of the way they worked together,” said Richardson. “Once we saw that they were ready for the competition, they went out and did fantastic.
TCISD also netted another medal as Dillon Harvey and Farrell Moeller finished with a bronze in the high school division. It was a milestone moment for the Stingarees, which topped a Richardson High School program that had won the state championship six of the last eight years along with earning a medal in nationals each year since they had started their program.
“We knew we were front-runners for a medal because the Texas competition is so hard,” said TCHS robotics teacher James Jobe.
Harvey and Moeller were required to build a robot from scratch, achieving the feat in less than half of the eight hours allotted to do so before using their robot in competition the next day. They were also put in a situation where they had to adjust to a design change by the judges, which they were asked to do in less than an hour.
The popularity of robotics isn’t just limited to Texas City, which also plans to offer the program in La Marque. Dickinson, Friendswood and much of the Clear Creek Independent School District have their own robotics courses, with each giving students a big first step toward their academic and professional futures.
“I won’t have as a great a builder as (Harvey) since he’s not going to be here next year, but I think it will go well when we get back to nationals next year,” said Moeller.
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