The Prior Lake High School’s Robotics Team is one of the many cool activities offered at our high school. Many students participate in this rigorous group and enjoy it!

The KING TeC 2169 website says that the Robotics progression can start as early as the grade of kindergarten and can continue until senior year of high school. There are many different levels of this activity, starting at the Lego League Jr., which is designated for kindergarteners through third graders.

KING TeC was founded in 2006 and has been competing since! KING TeC stands for Kids Integrating New Grasped Technological and engineering Concepts.’

Recently, the KING TeC team revealed their robot for the 2019 year, and they put an animated video together to reveal their project they’ve been spending so much time on.

Ella Kocina, a current sophomore, has been on the robotics team since fifth grade. She decided to start a lego league team with her friends late elementary school, and they have competed in this cool activity since. Sadly, this is the last year that they will be competing all together.

Kocina has not only built strong friendships through this extracurricular, but she has learned valuable skills with it. Ella says “I have learned so many new things like fabrication, programming, computer aided design, how to write a business plan, and so many valuable people skills.”

Ella does more work for the non-technical side of robotics. She works on writing business plans, running outreach events, and connecting with a variety of sponsors. Although Ella loves spending time on this team, there are also challenges and difficulties she faces with her role. Talking with different people, either through writing, talking, or emailing, she truly has to be confident in what she is doing in order to effectively communicate with others.

Being on the robotics team requires high schoolers to be independent and dedicated to this club. Not only do kids meet outside of school for practice, but there are multiple competitions that competitors spend their time at. Ella spends her time being a general member of the team and acting as the department head of business.

Robotics is a very cool team that Prior Lake participates in, and Ella is just one high schooler that has been greatly impacted by this activity. Her friendships and skills she learned while being on this team will never be forgotten.