SCARBOROUGH, Maine — This weekend hundreds of students are set to compete in the VEX Robotics State Championships in South Portland.
"It's an application of all the STEM things that I like in school. The building, the physics, trial and error. It's like big kid Legos," Collin Joyce, a senior at Scarborough High School (SHS) said.
Ahead of this weekend's tournament, members of the SHS robotics team spent part of their school vacation week making final adjustments to their robots.
"There's just a lot of different puzzles you have to solve which keeps it fun and interesting," SHS senior Ethan Schulz.
This year, students competing in the robotics state championship will be playing spin-up.
"We've seen extraordinary growth. Even though we had the pandemic, we've still seen these teams come back stronger than ever," Alison Bessette, Robotics Institute of Maine board of director vice-chair, said.
The Robotics Institute of Maine helps coordinate and plan the robotics competition. Bessette said this year, 72 teams will be competing, which is the largest competition they've ever had.
"They've been putting in hundreds and hundreds of hours, working day-in, day-out," Alison Avery, the SHS robotics coach, said.
Avery said this year, the Scarborough robotics team has grown from eight people last year to 20 this year.
"It's a team, even though we're not playing soccer or football, we have to work together, we have to communicate," Joyce said.
The Robotics Institute of Maine will be live-streaming the competition on its YouTube channel. The top six high school teams and top four middle school teams have the opportunity to move on to the VEX Robotics World Championships in April.