Central Valley student robotics team heads to world competition for first time

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- For the first time in Central Valley history, a local high school will compete for the world championship in robotics.

The four high school seniors from Edison High School are gearing up for world domination after qualifying for next month's Robotics World Championship in Louisville, Kentucky.

"There's going to be about 500 teams, 30 countries," student Jesus Nieblas exclaimed. "That's like China, Ireland, Japan - just all over the place. It's going to be really interesting."

The group will represent Edison High as the first robotics team from the Central Valley to earn a trip to the championship following an impressive run at the state competition.

"We've all been working towards this one main goal for four years," student Jordan Wong said.

"I'm expecting to see different kinds of people, different types of designs, maybe things we've never thought about or maybe things that might break the game or make it more challenging," student Christopher Casillas said.

The students have spent countless hours after school building their bots from scratch and then rebuilding them until they're just right for competition.

If you've never seen a bot match before the rules are quite simple. Basically, you outscore your opponent by using your robot to get stars and cubes over the fence in under two minutes.

"This comes down to the point where we're going to have to try our absolute very best like never before to get ahead, to get first in that position to win to get the furthest we can in the game," Hudson Dorian said. "And that's going to be an effort like we've never seen before."

All four students are part of Edison's engineering program and have plans to major in engineering in college.

"We have kids who work hard every day and often in the classroom," Edison's principal Lindsay Sanders said. "Those don't get as highlighted, so it's fun to see kids get recognized nationally or worldwide within the Valley, but especially Edison students."

The bot battle in Louisville begins April 19.