Two minutes. Weeks of learning, building and practicing come down to two minutes. Small robots, controlled by teenagers, compete to score the most points in a game that changes every year. Even for the most prepared team, everything can go wrong.
M’Aiken Magic, a local robotics team in Aiken, won the FIRST Tech Challenge world championship in 2010, when current head coach John Fogarty was a student. He described the bite-sized games as both highly stressful and exciting.
“I can vividly remember every moment of the match that we played when we won the world championship … because of the fact that things were not going the way I wanted them to, and so I had to improvise,” Fogarty said.
Fogarty, now 26, has taken on a mentoring and coaching role with M’Aiken Magic after spending his middle and high school years in the organization.
During the day, Fogarty works as a software engineer for TaxSlayer. He spends roughly 15 to 20 hours each week at Aiken High School, where M’Aiken Magic is based.
“It’s just tons of fun. I mean, some people like to build birdhouses and build racecars and stuff at their house … and I’m like, I’d rather come here and build robots with some high school kids,” Fogarty said. “I enjoyed it so much as a student, that’s part of the reason why. I get as much thrill out of the competition, even though I’m not the one driving anymore.”
There are two leagues available in the program. For students newer to the world of robotics, there is the VEX Robotics Competition. More experienced students can compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition, where teams can build robots weighing as much as 120 pounds.
Both of these competition leagues are international, with students competing from all over the world.
Fogarty said there are usually about 20 to 30 kids participating in M’Aiken Magic every year.
“Even if you’re not going to go into engineering or STEM, necessarily, as a career path for the future, it’s extremely beneficial, the stuff that you learn. And the problem-solving skills you get from it. Even communication skills,” Fogarty said.
Read the full Aiken Standard article here.