‘A great place to grow and learn’: Off-season robotics competition brings 33 teams to Rockford

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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WINNEBAGO — Hundreds of designers, builders, programmers, drivers and other budding roboticists will compete this weekend in an event that blends sports and technology.

The annual Rock River Robotics Off-season Competition on Saturday will bring 33 teams from five states to Rock Valley College.

The event, now in its 12th year, is a a co-production of four local high school robotics teams — the Flaming Monkeys of Belvidere, Rockford Robotics, Stateline Robotics from Hononegah High School, and Winnovation, which brings together students from Winnebago and Pecatonica.

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The group held its annual media day on Thursday to showcase this year’s game, their robots and draw attention to the competition, called R2OC for short.

“I’m really happy with what it’s brought to me with learning new skills — not just with learning about programming and designing things and machining — but also a lot of valuable social skills that are very important in the workplace, for example,” said Kai Holdmann, 16, a soon-to-be junior at Auburn High School who is part of Rockford Robotics. “So there’s a lot of learning that’s more than just the bots.”

Holdmann, who envisions a future as a mechanical engineer, has been involved in robotics since he was in fourth grade starting with a Lego robotics team.

“That’s one of the really cool benefits of this program is that there’s a lot of progression,” he said. “You start early in fourth grade with Lego robotics, which really teaches you some of the principles of how the mechanics work and designing things work, but it also teaches you teamwork and how that team dynamic works.”

This weekend’s event gives new players a chance to get a feel for competition without the pressure of an in-season match, said Zane Joly, a junior at Winnebago High School who is part of team Winnovation.

“It’s not testing against others, it’s competing to have fun in my opinion,” Joly said.

Joly said robotics has more to it than building a robot to compete: there’s friendship, problem-solving and hard times to overcome.

Asya Mausehund, a soon-to-be freshman at Harlem High School who is competing in her first R2OC, had a similar philosophy.

“This is more for me and just having fun,” she said. “I love community of what I do, and my robotics team is such a family where we can joke at each other.”

The type of game teams compete in changes every year.

Last year, it was called Charged Up, and tasked alliances of teams to collect cubes and traffic cones, place them on a grid and then balance on a charge station.

This year, the game is called Crescendo and it challenges competitors to building robots to collect foam rings, called notes, and shoot them into goals on their end of the field. At the end of the match, teams can earn additional points by climbing on metal chains that are part of a structure called a stage.

For the eighth-straight year, R2OC will award scholarships post-secondary education scholarships to juniors and seniors. This time it will award six $1,000 scholarships, an increase from past years, including two who will go to Rock Valley College via the RVC Foundation Gamechanger Scholarship and the Norma J. Trojan Scholarship.

The nonprofit will also provide up to $5,000 in grant funding for robotics expenses for programs based in Boone, Stephenson and Winnebago counties.

Karen Hill, co-chairperson of the nonprofit R2OC and lead mentor for Winnovation, compared a robotics team to a small business because of the variety of roles from designing and building to driving, scouting and media and marketing.

“The skills that they have gained here, and the network of being a part of the first robotics program, gets them into all kinds of opportunities,” Hill said. “The network is tremendous and it’s international. We tell students, even after you graduate college this stays on your resume, because employers may have been on it themselves or their company has sponsored a team.”

Those skills lend themselves to future careers in technology, engineering and other paths.

“You don’t have to be one thing, you can have a skillset or come in with no skillset and learn new things, which is the really important part for me because I don’t have to do what I’m good at, I can learn something new,” said Holdmann, of Rockford Robotics. “There are lots of options for lots of people and a great place to grow and learn.”

If you go | R2OC

Where: PE Center at Rock Valley College, 3301 N. Mulford Road, Rockford

When: 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, July 27

More info: r2oc.org

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas