Competing with over 60 from eight different countries on March 16-17, the robotics team secured a spot at the First Robotics Competition after securing a wildcard entry at the regional round of the competition.

Part of team Iona Fusion, St Columba students Alex Reynolds and Thomas Crundwell said they were so excited about going to the United States.

"Since January 6, we have been working on our robot and making sure it was ready to go for the competition," Alex said.

"We have had to design, build and code our robot to do what we want it to and after our first competition two weeks ago we came back and made a lot of changes to ensure we were ready to go over the weekend.

"When we arrived in Sydney we were able to do 15 practice matches because everyone was still setting up and we were all ready to go.

"That really helped us feel confident going in. We had no expectations but we wanted to do our best."

"We won the highest rookie seed and an award for our creative robot which was fun," Thomas said.

"We had a plastic wrap around our robot which the judges really liked."

The robotics team at Hastings Secondary College secured the same wildcard to the United States competition for the last two years.

The pair said that when they go over to Texas it will be a huge learning experience.

"The robots that will be in Texas are next level. The teams we will be up against have scientists from NASA helping them but it will be a great opportunity to learn," Alex said.

Paul King robotics mentor at Hastings Secondary College said despite the team not getting the golden ticket to the United States again the new team learnt a great deal in Sydney.

"After 83 qualifying matches that involved 62 teams from eight countries we were the number one ranked team, "the minor premieres" so to speak," Mr King said.

"Our alliance partners for the playoffs consisted of team 3132 Thunder Downunder and team 7561 Blue Flamingos.

"After winning our first two matches in the quarter finals, one of our alliance partners broke down at the start of the first match of the semi finals. We ended up losing our quarter finals 2-1.

"We were very happy with our achievements in the competition, especially considering all of the technical issues and problems that were encountered on the first day that left us only being able to have three practice matches before the competition commenced and no vision tracking for the entire competition.​"

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