Local High School's Robotics Team Wins State Championship

MIAMI (CBS4) - Archbishop Edward McCarthy High School is the home to the new state champion robot and its operators are four of their students.

The brains behind the Mavericks robotics team are Ronald Geis, Stephen Hanrahan, Nik Menendez and Valeria Puchaicela.

"It was a huge project we had a lot of challenges I'm glad we've come this far," said Geis.

The team of four makes up just one of a number of robotics teams around the state. Recently they won the State of Florida's VEX Robotics Championship at the University of South Florida. While the win was impressive, what was even more impressive was that Team 7121 was just put together in the beginning of the year.

"Starting from nowhere in August to winning the state all in just seven months is unbelievable," said Stephen Hanrahan their instructor.

During the competition the Maverick team went up against other teams in an event called "Toss Up" which required them to design, build and program task oriented robots to compete against other teams for intense two-minute matches. They competed against the top 40 teams in the state and they came out on top.

Together they built a mechanical robot able to pick up three balls at a time and toss them into a cylinder. They put in countless hours but for these four students and their teacher all the hard work and dedication was well worth it.

"The easiest way to go into a competition to win is expect nothing and stay as cool as you can cause once you get nervous you start making mistakes and can get back to where you used to be" said Hanrahan.

Next week the team will by heading to Anaheim, California to compete in the world championship competition.  When they return  they will dismantle their wining robot and start on another challenge for next year.