By By Clif Knight, Hartselle Enquirer
Priceville High School ‘s Robotics Team came out on top in the Tennessee Valley Boosting Engineering and Science Technology (BEST) competition at Calhoun Community College on Saturday for the second year in a row.
The winning team will go on to compete in regional competition at Auburn University Dec. 12-13. Also making the grade to compete regionally were teams from Austin-Decatur, Albertville and Redstone Arsenal.
In addition to winning the BEST award for overall performance, Priceville High was named winner of six other awards They were: first place for Best Web Page Design, first place for Best Pep Band, first place for Best Oral Presentation, first place for Best Table Display and Interview; first place for Best Spirit and Sportsmanship and second place for Best Project Engineering Notebook.
Team members worked non-stop for four weeks preparing for competition. Its 50 members went up against 18 other entries from throughout the state to determine which two teams would advance to the South’s BEST Competition at Auburn University.
Priceville High had a winning tradition to uphold. Its team was judged best in the Tennessee Valley competition in 2007 and went on to place third in the South BEST Competition. In addition, PHS was recognized as having the Best Website, Best Spirit and Sportsmanship and Best Presentation. In no year since it was organized in 2003 has the team failed to place in the competition.
The theme of this year’s competition was “Enduring the Disturbance of Turbulence “ and the objective was to design and build a robot capable of assembling an airplane and keeping it in flight for a minimum of three seconds. A point system based on levels of difficulty was used to test the teams in their ability to achieve specified tasks. The target for assembly and flight test was three minutes.
In addition to engineering, the teams also competed in marketing and outreach.