CITADEL CHRISTIAN SCHOOL’S BETA CLUB ROBOTICS TEAM HEADED TO NATIONALS
The Citadel Christian School Elementary Beta Club is headed to the National Beta Club Convention next month.
The nationals appearance comes after the club’s robotics team earned second place at the robotics competition for the State Beta Convention. The national convention will take place in Kissimmee, Florida June 25-29.
The robotics team, made of students Brady Horne, Owen Kampreth, Gianna Morfeld-Fraser and Bekah Davis, created a project inspired by BVR Waste & Recycling. The students said they chose a garbage truck as their model because they wanted to “radiate kindness” throughout the city of Brenham, connecting the Beta Club pillars of Character, Service, Achievement, and Leadership with the work of keeping their community clean.
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The team, named R2B2 (Radiant Recycling Beta Bots), built and programmed the robot on their own, with some guidance from sponsor Collena Jantzi and volunteer robotics leader Lynwood Summerlin. They learned the basics through a program called Scratch and quickly advancing through a robotics curriculum.
Each student took on a specific role. Kampreth focused on coding and served as the team spokesperson. Davis handled design, decoration and building. Morfeld-Fraser shared building and design duties. Horne also worked on coding and – according to his teammates – served as the team’s resident comedian.
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In total, the team will be competing in nine events at nationals, including individual and team academic and arts competitions.
The team is actively raising funds in order to make their trip to nationals a reality, through avenues like a bake sale, a car wash, and a GoFundMe. Their goal is $11,700, which covers travel, upgraded robots, and software that they currently borrow.