Thursday, March 21, 2013

Hawthorne High School’s robotics team an improbable powerhouse

The dedication of the students on the robotics team at Hawthorne High is such that it isn’t unusual for their coach to shoo them out of the classroom as late as 9 p.m., or midnight, or even 2 in the morning.

That’s because the team is more than just a school club. It’s more than a home away from home.

It’s even more than building a waist-high robot resembling a Star Wars droid that can swish basketballs from the three-point range or fling Frisbees into metal baskets from 30 feet away – although these feats, in themselves, are nothing short of a marvel.

For these students, it’s about defending last year’s improbable success. In April 2012, the little team that could from Hawthorne High – one of the lowest-performing and high-poverty high schools in the South Bay – went to St. Louis and took second place among the event’s 400 competitors. That is, they took second place in the nation. You could even go so far as to say they were runner-up worldwide, as the competition also included teams from Israel, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. (Top honors went to a team from Florida.)

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