Owensboro Innovation Academy’s Robotics team received $2,000 from Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline to help support the team as they head to the national competition in Texas this week.
Team Captains Michael Gray and Luke Austin said that the money will help the team fund more opportunities for the engineering programs and give them the ability to host more tournaments this upcoming season.
“It also means we get to buy certain new sensors, all that type jazz for engineering. It means that we are able to work on more projects have more metal for pinball machines that we have,” Gray said.
The amount came as a surprise to the team, as they didn’t know that they were receiving anything.
Competition season for the team is packed with numerous meets, as they compete nearly every other week.
This season marks the third time the team has qualified for nationals but is just the first time they are able to compete in person.
“It’s not just a national competition; it is global. This year I think there’s a little bit of division on that, but we may be playing with people from Canada, from the places in South America,” Gray said. “There’s a lot of different opportunities to meet people.”
Shawn Patterson, Executive Vice President/COO of Southern Star, said the donation for the robotics team also marks their commitment to supporting youth and STEM programs around Owensboro.
“We’ve been able to partner with OIA for 4 years now and hopefully helped the team that qualified for nationals to travel down to nationals and bring home another trophy,” Patterson said.
