ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
In recent years, one activity that seems to have caught on amongst many of America’s youth is robotics.
Many teams can be found representing schools, organizations, businesses and even churches. Now a group of local families has formed a team of homeschool students, and despite still being in its infancy, the team is already doing quite well.
The Neon Knights Robotics Team is made up of students from some area communities, including Liberal, and Coach Kathy Harris said the team was started last year by families the homeschool coop, Heritage Homeschoolers.
“There were some people interested in getting the kids to learn about robotics,” she said. “They started the team last year. My two boys participated on the team last year. I was not a coach. This year, we needed a new coach. There were two of us who were coaching. I was the assistant, but our head coach was not able to go on to the world competition, so I stepped into the role partway through the season.”
Thus far, Harris said parents have been learning and figuring out what robotics is all about.
“When our family first started, when they first signed up last year, we didn’t even really know we were signing up for a competition,” she said.
Harris’s son, Eli, has participated in robotics camp at the Liberal Recreation Department in the past, and Harris said adults with the Neon Knights thought simply learning was what robotics was going to be like for them.
“We didn’t realize the whole competition element to it,” she said. “There’s a lot more to it than just the robot game, where they build the robot and code it to do things.”
The Neon Knights participate in the FIRST LEGO League, which has four different areas for judges to look at, and Harris said the robot game is just one piece of the pie.
“They also have to be able to talk about their robot design and tell the judges all about that,” she said. “They also have to do an innovation project, a research project. Each year, it’s different based on the theme. They have to present on that to the judges. They’re also judged on the core values of FLL.”
The core values of FLL are fun, discovery, teamwork, innovation, inclusion and impact. The Neon Knights team recently participated in the world robotics championship in Houston, and Harris said she like to see other teams building and racing big robots.
“That was on the main level of the convention center,” she said. “We’re talking 600 people along with thousands of people in the stands watching it.”
Younger members of the local team were invited to the Houston competition last year to see what it was like. The group that made up this year’s championship participant featured four families.
The Neon Knights placed first at the regional robotics competition, but the lone highlight from Houston for the team was one team member receiving the Woodie Flowers Gracious Professionalism Award.
Harris said gracious professionalism is one of the values they emphasize at FLL, and she read from information on the award given to participants.
“Gracious professionalism is part of pursuing a meaningful life,” she said. “One can add to society and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing one has acted with integrity and sensitivity.”
Simply put, Harris said the award is all about being kind and respectful to others.
“FLL is not all about trash talk,” she said. “It’s not that sort of atmosphere. It’s all about what can we learn from each other. It was very inspiring.”
Harris said many of the teams in Houston first had to win local and state competitions and had done so for years, and this creates a program where knowledge is passed down from one year’s team to the next.
“We’re just starting out,” she said. “It’s a great atmosphere where people want to share their knowledge. We got to meet people from all around the world in the room there with us. We met people from China, the Czech Republic, Malaysia, Belgium and all over the United States.”
Naturally, Harris said the team has been a learning experience so far with coaches learning about the FIRST program and the balance of guiding team members without doing the work for them.
“It’s the kids doing the work,” she said. “How do you teach them and guide them while letting them be the ones who discover how they can figure things out and improve on their designs for the robot and their innovation project will be? I learned a lot and met people at the competition.”
Harris said she plans to be in touch with coaches from some of the teams she met at the world competition, who she said should have good advice and tips for running a robotics team.
“We did not expect to make it to the world competition,” she said. “Last year, they got second place in core values and second place in robot games. For the first year, that was exciting, but really unexpected. Coming into this year, we thought maybe we can place in one of the areas, but we did not expect to be the ones to make it. It was a whirlwind from there. The time of our regional competition is so close to the world championship. Some teams have known they’re going to this since the fall.”
Harris said one disadvantage of having a homeschool team is drawing from a very small pool of students for the team.
“At a school, you’ve got a larger group of kids to draw from as far as who is interested and has inclination in this specific area of robotics and coding and engineering and STEM,” she said.
Harris said the team is made up of families not just from Liberal, including some from Hugoton and Adams, Okla., and many of those families have mostly younger children.
“We don’t have a lot of the older children,” she said. “We’re very small.”
One advantage Harris said the team has is it meets when other children are in school.
“We have a little more flexibility in our schedule, but we don’t have a school with a space where we can practice and the resources of a school behind us,” she said. “We’re very grateful to the Rec Department. They let us practice there and use the robot kits from them.”
The Neon Knights finished at the top of the bottom third of the 153 teams, beating out 41 teams in Houston. Harris said teams generally do not come away from the competition knowing how they finished.
“There are five finalists and an overall champion,” she said. “We came away feeling we had done really well. The boys improved their robot game from regional. The score they won with at regional, they were able to improve by another 60 points and get their absolute best for the whole season. For us, that was a win and getting to see the teams that could get the maximum points for the whole board.”
With this in mind, Harris said team members felt they did better at worlds than they did at regionals.
“They improved on that,” she said. “We haven’t gotten our feedback back yet. We’ll be very interested to see what did the judges think, what feedback can they give us to help us grow and improve in those areas for next year.”
In order to travel to Houston, the Neon Knights team had to raise money in the amount of about $8,000, $2,000 for which was a registration fee which Harris said had to be raised in less than 20 days.
“We went to corporate sponsors and asked for their help, and we were very blessed there were businesses that supported us,” she said. “Our top sponsors were Abbott Construction and Golden Plains Credit Union, and we’re very grateful to them and our other sponsors. Dustin Ormiston and Kay Burtzloff with the High Plains Heritage Foundation were able to help us.”
HPHF acted as the team’s fiscal agent, as Neon Knights is not a non-profit, nor is it associated with any school.
“That was very helpful because we didn’t know anything about that process,” Harris said. “They were also able to help us secure some grant funds through Cooper Clark. That helped us, and we’re very grateful to all the community people who supported us by buying raffle tickets, lasagna meals and personal donations from people who just wanted to donate.”
Harris said she found the fundraising process quite intimidating, and she was somewhat fearful.
“That’s a lot of money, but we are very fortunate and blessed by the community of Liberal and how they supported us in that,” she said. “Everyone was very happy to help. It was a good experience for the boys to go around. They did the talking.”
Both Eli and Kathy are excited to start preparing for next year’s robotics season.
“I’m really excited after seeing the world competition,” Eli said. “It inspires me. What if I did go in next year? I’m going to build a robot that does everything.”
“It was helpful for the kids to see the innovation projects from the other teams,” Kathy said. “They haven’t just thought of what if with a lot of these teams, but what could we do. They’ve walked down the path. They’ve done it. They’ve applied for a patent, or they’ve made educational videos.”
Kathy said she has learned much from her experience as a coach and hopes to build on that in the future.
“It has shown us how can we do better in that area next year and improve even more,” she said.
