Pizitz Middle School Robotics Team recognized at council meeting

The Pizitz Middle School Robotics teams showed off their robots at Monday night's City Council meeting at City Hall. 

The team, under the direction of coach Bill McInnish, won a design award for one of its five competition robots on March 7 at the state championships at Jacksonville State University. The team placed 12th overall in the competition, which pitted Pizitz against both middle and high school teams from Alabama. 

The design award gave the team an automatic berth into the world championship meet, April 15-18 in Louisville, Kentucky, McInnish said. Through community donations, the team was able to raise the money needed to travel to the competition. 

During the council meeting, McInnish expressed his gratitude for the team. 

"This team is very special to me, especially because this will be the last team I coach," he said. "We are very proud of them and their work."

The team will be taking "Robot A," a forklift-shaped robot that can build tall towers and stack objects. Students have been designing the robot since the school year began in August and have rebuilt and upgraded it several times, McInnish said. He estimated that only three robots of this type existed in the state.

"We've been to seven competitions, and after each one they redesign it and go through the engineering process to make it better," McInnish said.