Cumberland County High School’s robotics team, The Aftershocks, is experiencing a top-notch year as the team prepares to participate in the upcoming district competition. The Aftershocks rank 15th out of 37 teams in the region that began competing March 16, and the team ranks 68th out of 126 total teams in the region.

If The Aftershocks receive enough points in a competition in Blacksburg this weekend, the team will be eligible to compete in the district competition. Dr. Jeffrey Scales, principal of Cumberland County High School, said the top 54 teams are eligible to compete in the district competitions. FIRST Chesapeake is the robotics division in which The Aftershocks compete.

The FIRST program “uses robots as the vehicle to bring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)-based leadership enrichment programs and competitions to youth in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia,” according to the FIRST Chesapeake website. The website notes that the competitions draw more than 50,000 individuals who attend more than 15 robotics competitions in the Chesapeake district. Describing the technological features of the robot, Scales admired the students’ talent and collaboration.

“It’s amazing some of the things that they do,” Scales said. Scales said the district competition is set to take place at the University of Maryland.

David Sullivan, head coach of The Aftershocks Robotics Club, is in his second year leading the club.

“We’re in a better position than we were ever in before to get there,” Sullivan said about the district competition. “Hopefully we’ll be in districts and these kids will have something to be proud of. I’m proud of them anyway, but they want to go to districts, so I hope we get there. That’s their goal.”

Sullivan said there are 10 students in the club. The range of ages spans grades 7-12. He said the competitions each year have a different set of tasks the robots need to perform. The students will build the robot with special skills in order to complete the tasks. This year, for example, the robots are meant to travel through an arena, picking up cubes and stacking them in various places throughout the arena.

“Our robot has a lift on it where it’ll go up to a cube, and then it has an intake system that takes the cube in, then it can pick it up, ride around to wherever it needs to go, and then put it at different levels in the playing field,” Sullivan said.

He said prior to being the head coach of The Aftershocks, he coached football and taught the county’s Building and Trades class.

“Dr. Scales, came to me and said, ‘hey, I know you don’t really know anything about coding a robot, but I’m pretty sure you would be pretty good at building one, and so would your kids,’” Sullivan said. “So we took my kids, which are kind of like the hands-on guys, and we combined them with the thinkers and coders and the guys with all of the ideas, and it’s really worked out well with those two type of kids working together.”

“I’ve got to credit Dr. Scales for him coming up with the idea of putting both of those together and him and I got together on it,” Sullivan said. “We kind of handpicked the kids that we thought would work well with.”

He said the time and effort the students commit, which often includes working on weekends and staying after school, is extraordinary.

“You’ve got to be willing to put in a lot of work and a lot of time that is away from school,” Sullivan said. “These kids deserve all of the credit. They built the robot. All I did was supervise and make sure nobody cut their fingers off.”

He said The Aftershocks have received some help along the way. MidAtlantic Broadband’s Robert Sherer, an owner of an engineering firm in Colorado who was also a Cumberland County High School graduate, and has donated a considerable amount to the club.