Pizitz Middle School Robotics Team headed to world championships

The Robotics Team at Pizitz Middle School is headed to the world championships and is asking for help from the community to get there.

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. Now, they'll need to raise five thousand dollars in less than one month to ensure that the team can make it there.

"It would be a real shame to get a berth to worlds and not be able to get there," McInnish said in a telephone interview Monday. "We've already heard from our PTO, state Sen. Jabo Waggoner, and our Chamber of Commerce who have all helped us raise some funds. Some of our families are trying to help us as well." 

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.

Interested donors should call the school at 205-402-5354 for information on how to contribute to the team's trip.

-Submitted by Whitt McGhee