A Randall Consolidated School team won Gateway Technical College’s Sumo Bot Competition held recently at the college’s SC Johnson iMET Center in Sturtevant.

The team of seventh and eighth grade students called “The Gearheads” from the Twin Lakes school beat out 23 other teams at the annual event, which drew participants from as far away as Johnson Creek. A total of 100 students competed in the event that challenges high-schoolers and middle-schoolers in a number of engineering, building, presenting and remote control skills.

“I really appreciated all the energy that the students brought into the building for the competition,” said Gateway Electrical Engineering Technology instructor and sumobot event coordinator Brett Blasiman. “I appreciated seeing students engaged in the spirit of the event and being excited about engineering.”

Students build a sumobot and then compete in four categories at the event: Presentation and Documentation, Timed Task, Speed and Agility and SumoBot wrestling, which simulates sumo wrestling, except that robot controllers try to push their opponent outside of a circular area. This year’s timed task was for students to rescue Lego figurines from the Tower of Doom.

For more information about the competition, please reach out to Blasiman at blasimanb@gtc.edu.