RoboJackets win state competition

For the first time, the Starkville High School RoboJackets SeaPerch team has won the state competition and will continue on to regionals in Atlanta this May.

The team was split into two groups

operating remote operated underwater vehicles through a series of competitions, as well as an engineering notebook presentation. Overall, the divided team won third and fourth places in the obstacle course, first and third places o in the challenge, first and third in the engineering notebook and first and second overall.

“It feels great, totally unexpected, but it feels great to win,” said RoboJackets coach and SHS STEM teacher Denise Adair.

This was the RoboJackets third SeaPerch competition, and took place at the Sanderson Center on the Mississippi State University campus.

Team member Cassie Javorsky said the team is a tight-knit community.

“This is actually my first year doing SeaPerch,”said Javorsky, a SHS sophomore. “I was really nervous to do it at first, but it gave me a lot of confidence as I went through it.”

Team member Marshall Skelton, also a sophomore, explained the team’s preparation for competition.

“We had a little catfish tub with the course in it that we would practice with,” Skelton said. “That’s what it took. Practice Makes perfect.”

Skelton added that the team spent many hours after school preparing.

“Obviously, the water is the big deal, because it’s unforgiving,” Denise Adair said. “However, for the SeaPerch competition, there’s an obstacle course where you have to go through a series of rings, surface, go back through the rings and touch the wall. For the challenge course, you have to put hoops and cubes up on a zigzag apparatus.”

Adair added that at 11 members, the SeaPerch team was much smaller than the 60-odd member BEST Robotics team the RoboJackets field in the fall.

In February, the team was able to get one of their vehicle bodies autographed by oceanographer and explorer Robert Ballard when he spoke at MSU. However, that vehicle will never compete.

“That is strictly a model,” said team member Tyler Adair, son of Denise and her husband, Ty Adair, also a RoboJackets coach.