This year’s robotics competition is hosted in St. Cloud. The middle school teams will go Friday morning to the state competition and the high school team will go Saturday to the state competition.

NUACS reguarly send robotics teams to the state competition. This is the fourth time a Cathedral High School team has attended state.

Robotics coach Tim Watts said the secret to NUACS success was the dedication of the students and community support.

“We have some very hardworking and driven students,” he said. “We also have had a lot of community support from many local businesses and organizations.”

Miles Boesch works on Cathedral’s robot.

Every year, multiple teams of students at NUACS compete in robotics competition. Every year, students are tasked to build robots around specific tasks. Each year the task is different, requiring students to build and program a different robot.

“In a normal year, kids will start building in the summer,” Watts said. “This year kids started building as soon as they got the go-ahead in September. Some kids will build a robot and decide they want to change it and rebuild it.”

The robotics team have traveled to mutliple competitions around the state this year, including Mankato, Mongomery and Cold Spring. Judges rank students on the mechanics of their robots and how it functions. With enough points the teams qualify for state.

In the middle school competition, 28 teams have qualified for state with NUACS middle school team “Mechanical Hounds” ranked third overall.

NUACS high school team “Circuit Breakers” is ranked fifth out of 34 teams.

The state middle school competition will begin at 9 a.m. Friday and the state high school competition will start 9 a.m. Saturday. The two competitions will be broadcast virtually. A link for the competitionw will be placed on NUACS Facebook page for anyone to view.