CASSOPOLIS — Monday morning, a group of high school students sat around a room, tinkering with a metal arm attached to a robot. Soon, that arm will be used to climb an obstacle laid out during the FIRST Robotics 2020 competition.

The Cassopolis robotics team, the RoboRangers, is currently in the thick of preparing for its first competition of the year, which will take place in St. Joseph next month. Since January, the team has been working to build a robot and formulate a strategy to participate in this year’s “Star Wars”-themed competition.

Going into the 2020 season, team members said they have high hopes for success this year and are hoping to win a district competition and go on to both the state and world championship. In the past, the team has gone to state three times and worlds twice. Last year was the first the RoboRangers took home a district win.

“I feel really good,” said 11th-grader Alyssa Roark about the upcoming competition season. “We are getting really close to getting the robot finalized and are excited to compete.”

As the team prepares for competition, it is ramping up its fundraising efforts in addition to its building efforts. As the RoboRangers are self-funded, they rely on community sponsors to support their season. Though Tristan Westrate, an 11th-grader on the fundraising team for the RoboRangers, said the 2020 season has been one of the most financially successful yet, additional funding is still needed to support travel and costs associated with going to state and world competitions.

“We are in a place to cover the base costs, but are still looking for funding if we get to go to state and worlds,” Westrate said. “I really like the fundraising team because you get to go out there in the community and interact with people. It’s really grown my public speaking skills.”

Though both Roark and Westrate said there is a lot of time and effort involved in participating with robotics, they agreed that the work would be worth it once they see their robot compete.

“I joined the team and learned to love it,” Roark said. “It’s a lot of fun to build a robot that competes in front of so many people, and winning our first competition last year was really fun, too. It’s a lot of fun to build something and be proud of something and show it to everyone else.”

No matter whether or not the RoboRangers win or lose this season, an adult advisor to the team, Jim Ward, said students would have gained valuable skills just by participating in the club.

“It’s a great experience,” Ward said. “We’ve seen [robotics] change students’ course. We’ve seen students change their majors to engineering, business. It has an impact on the direction of their lives.”

For the next few weeks, the RoboRangers will be running tests, meeting with sponsors and finalizing their game strategy. All the while, team members said their hope of winning their competition would be driving them.

“I think we have a pretty good shot,” Westrate said. “I think it would be awesome to win another competition. That would be crazy and big for the team.”

“We won’t know how we are going to do until our first competition,” Roark added, “but I’ve got a good feeling. It would make me really proud to be able to show that a team like ours can accomplish big things like that.”

For more information or to sponsor the team, visit roborangers4325.com.