TCS Robotics team held a sponsors night in the theater and gallery on May 25 to attract new sponsors to support them in future competitions. 

Lightning Blue Lizards is the Columbus School robotics team led by the mentor Julian Zuñiga. The LBL had the opportunity to go to the South Florida Regionals twice. In 2019, they won the rookies award which led them to the worldwide competition, and in 2021, they won the entrepreneurship award. The aim of getting sponsors is to acquire the necessary materials and resources to compete again. 

“We have participated in two competitions of SFR, we got the rookies award in 2019, then the pandemic happened and instead of stopping we worked harder for future competitions, resulting in the entrepreneurship award in 2021,” Maria Adelaida Restrepo, Marketing leader.

In this event, The LBL invited 20 sponsors but only Education First, Personal Soft, Celcia, and Kratos attended. Some of the sponsors didn’t attend but scheduled meetings with the team. In 2 months they will be informed which are the sponsors that are willing to help them. 

“Other teams in the regional competition did sponsors night and that helped them have more recognition and companies actually sponsored them, we got inspired by them and wanted to try too,” Restrepo said.

Parents, sponsors, teammates, and future members attended the event. The exhibition took place from 4:30 pm to 5 pm where they presented prototypes, the history of the team, and future challenges. After the exhibition, a further explanation was provided to the sponsors for what they were asking for.

“We started in the gallery with an exhibition of everything we had achieved and what the competition was like. Afterward, we went to the theater and gave a more advanced explanation of how the team works and what our goals are,” Gabriel Menyard, Robotics Team Member said.

 The team also asks sponsors to help students from Sector Oficial to receive a scholarship in order to collaborate with the school’s robotics team. One of the main goals is for a sponsor to give a scholarship to students with low income so they can participate in their robotics team events like TOM, maker camps, and robotics competitions.

“In the robotic team we also want to implement STEM throughout the whole city, we want people to be inspired and we want to help change the community someway by implementing STEM,” Isaac Velez, Robotics team member, said.

They are asking for mentors specialized in coding and Java so they can join as program and marketing experts. They also need help getting materials for the robots such as aluminum and wood. 

“Sponsors are super important for the team because they can help us in many ways, such as offering us mentorships, economic resources, tools and also services,” Pablo Arango, Robotics Team Member, said.

The next competition is in January where the challenge will be announced, then the team has two months to work on a prototype and in March compete in The South Florida Regionals, every year the challenge varies.

“For next year we are going to start doing some workshops with some of the sponsors, and start doing the part of the autonomous programming and mechanical system design practices in order to have an impeccable performance and a good result in the competition,” Arango said.