RoboBOTS returns today

Yahoo

05-04-2025

Bragging rights are on the line at today's RoboBOTS tournament not only for the championship team and its school, but also for one family holding its own mini reunion.
Technical education teachers Asa Williams III and Carissa Williams not only are husband and wife, but RoboBOTS team coaches for Cambridge Springs and Meadville, respectively.
Two of their sons, Asa Williams IV, 28, and Dillan Williams, 24, serve as referees for the robot battles. Asa IV works as a tool and die maker at Riley Tool in Cochranton while Dillan is a mechanical engineer at Ridg-U-Rak, a manufacturing company in North East.
Asa III has been involved as an adviser and coach in the RoboBOTS program since it started in the 2006-2007 school year. He first was a technical education education teacher at Maplewood High School and has been at Cambridge Springs High School for about the past 10 years.
Carissa Williams has been a coach and adviser at Meadville just since the 2022-2023 year when she got involved in January 2023 as a long-term substitute teacher in technical education.
She was on Meadville's staff the year before as a ceramics art teacher. However, she had certification in technical education as well.
Carissa Williams, though, has a RoboBOTS tournament championship as a coach with Meadville winning in 2023.
'When I became the long-term substitute that January (2023), I had 10 weeks to help the kids get it together,' she said. 'I had always went with (Asa III) to the tournaments — but it was the first year competing against each other.'
'The night before (the tournament) we were talking about it and he said, 'If you win, you have to take the kids to nationals',' Carissa recalled. 'We laughed and laughed about it — then we won.'
There is a good natured rivalry between the couple, evident in a reporter's visit to Cambridge Springs High School earlier this week to Asa III's classroom. He posed a key question to his students, 'What's our goal?'
'Beat Meadville!' was shouted back by the students.
Both Asa III and Carissa say they enjoy seeing students involved in the RoboBOTS program grow as they apply lessons while having fun.
'It's great seeing the kids come up with ideas,' Asa III said. 'It's designed to make the kids think outside the box. It's manufacturing, budgeting, fund-raising. It's like running a real business.'
'It's getting them involved in all the different aspects of it — from design to documentation to manufacturing,' Carissa said. 'The kids learn what they don't like and do like.'
Both the Williams' sons enjoyed growing up with RoboBOTS. First, they were just tagging along as small children. Then it expanded to being involved as students with their dad, and it led to careers in manufacturing and being referees with the tournament.
'I get first-class seats for all the bouts as a referee,' Asa IV joked about being a referee.
'I enjoy it,' Dillan said. 'It is always a blast. I learned a lot through RoboBOTS and it's helped me become a project engineer.'
RoboBOTS was started by the northwestern Pennsylvania chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA), a manufacturing trade group, to get students interested in manufacturing and technical careers.
The competition has student teams design and build 15-pound robots that battle it out in a double-elimination tournament held at Meadville Area Senior High School.
YOU CAN GO
RoboBOTS is a hands-on robot-building contest for high school and middle school students sponsored by the northwestern Pennsylvania chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association. This year, 27 teams from 12 schools in the region will have robots battle against each other today at Meadville Area Senior High, 930 North St. Extension. Admission is free. Doors open at 8 a.m. with competition at 9.