HUTTO – The halls of Hutto High School were booming Monday, Dec. 5 with a hallway pep rally celebrating the 2022 UIL State Championship Competition of Best of Texas Robotics. The reason for the celebration, Hutto ISD is once again home to a state championship Robotics UIL title. The UIL competition was held Dec. 1-3 in Frisco. Over the weekend, the Hutto High School Robotics Team, RoboCo XI, won the gold medal.
UIL added the robotics competition seven years ago and Hutto ISD has either ranked State Champion or Runner-Up for all seven years.
The 45-member 2022 team competed with 72 other teams across the state. It is the fifth time RoboCo has been named state champions since the UIL started a robotics competition, making RoboCo the team to beat and Andrew Haub and Caroline Stalsworth, the winningest coaches in the UIL robotics competition.
Since 2016, the Hutto High School robotics team has competed in the state finals every year. In 2016 and 2020, the team came home as runner-up. The other five trips to the finals resulted in a state championship.
In the robotics competition, students create an entire company around their product. They form a marketing team, exhibit team, engineering notebook team, spirit and sportsmanship team, build team, and driver team.
“We have high expectations of our competitors and give them opportunities and direction to be successful, but the key is we go into this not focused on winning but focused on doing our best and not accepting mediocrity,” said District Lead Robotics Instructor, Andrew Haub.
Haub launched the robotics program with teacher Ryan Mann at Hutto Middle School in 2012. Haub then transferred to Hutto High School where he oversees the team today, along with Robotics coach Caroline Stalsworth.
