Robotics Clubs Give Students Marketable Career Skills

Energy Day is a free, family-friendly festival which explores Colorado's energy industry and the jobs within it.

One of the highlights of Energy Day is the Kendrick Castillo Memorial Robotics Tournament. Kendrick was the 18-year-old killed in the shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch, three years ago. He was captain of his school's robotics team. Now ten teams from all over the region will compete in the tournament in Kendrick's name.

East High School's robotics team will be hosting the tournament. They'll have their jazzercise-themed robot in the action. Jazzy Judi was designed to play the FRC Game Rapid React. The goal of the game is to shoot an oversized tennis ball into this oversized hub.

"The entire game is a puzzle and this is one solution we made to it," said Dresden Friar, a junior on the Angelbotics team.

Building Jazzy Judi taught the team a lot of hard skills in engineering and software coding, but they also learn soft skills in leadership and communications.

"They have to interact with each other across those specialty areas, to do one big project, otherwise something like this would not have been successful," said Joel Noble, lead mentor and head coach of Angelbotics.

Jazzy Judi has been successful.  She took 2nd place at the Orange County CA Regional, 1st in the Colorado Regional, 6th place at the FIRST Robotics World Championship, and 7th place at the Indiana Robotics Invitational. But maybe more importantly, she's just plain fun.

"This is just a culmination of all the things I love doing and there is an amazing social aspect to it," Friar told CBS News Colorado.

LINK: Energy Day

Jazzy Judi will be in action at Energy Day on Saturday, September 24, 2022. The festival runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. outside of East High School. It's free and open to the public.