R4Creating robotics team conquers BEST competition

LAS CRUCES — The BEST Robotics State Tournament was held Oct. 19 in Las Cruces and, as in previous years, the Rio Rancho-based robotics team from R4Creating dominated.

Ten students from the R4Creating Robotics Team (R4) competed against 17 different teams from Texas and New Mexico in the BEST competition, and they took trophies in eight different categories.

The R4 team won first place in Robot Competition, Engineering Notebook, Marketing Presentation, Exhibit Booth, Interview and Spirit. But the grand prize was their first place Best Award trophy. The competition’s highest honor, the BEST Award honors the students’ efforts in every category of the STEM entrepreneurial competition.

“Our students are learning critical teamwork and problem-solving skills while building a robot,” said R4Creating founder and executive director Dr. Shelly Gruenig in a news release. “The competition is a STEM entrepreneurial competition where students build a robot, write an engineering notebook, prepare a professional marketing presentation, and build an exhibit booth.”

The R4Creating roster this year was Megan Conklin, Timothy Kuckartz, Skylar Gamache, Autumn Solecki, Finn Evilsizor, Andrew Steinfeldt, David Kuckartz, Cheynne Gamache and Spencer Case.

The coaches were Dr. Shelly Gruenig and Karena Omdahl.

Team mentors were Bob Gruenig, Melissa Solecki, Suzanne Lutz, Elijah Ornelis and Tony Porzio.

This year’s competition theme and course was based on traversing and preparing humans to live on the moon.

BEST Robotics, according to the website, is “a middle and high school robotics competition whose mission is to engage and excite students about engineering, science and technology as well as inspire them to pursue careers in these fields.”

Each year, more than 18,000 robotics students from more than 850 middle and high schools compete in their state-level BEST competitions.

Next, the R4 team heads to Dallas, Texas, to compete in the regional competition in early December. Gruenig and her team will look to bounce back this year after a tough regional competition in 2023. The R4 team is always a contender to win at the regional level, having taken the top prize there three times (2022, 2019, 2018).

For information on how to get involved or how to stream the next level of the BEST Robotics Competition, visit r4creating.org.