THATCHER, AZ — An Arizona town known best for farming and mining is now home to a troop of robotics champions.
In the small town of Thatcher, with just over 4,800 people, middle school teacher Chris Carrell described the typical student interest to ABC15.
“You very much have a strong athletics side, Thatcher is everyone's rival. That’s what we always say,” he said.
Thatcher Middle School may soon continue that rival status beyond sports, thanks to a contraption known across the robotics community as "the wiggly noodle."
“They wanted to call it wiggly noodle because as it was doing its mission, it was wiggling around,” said Mr. Carrell.
This summer, Mr. Carrell guided a team of six middle-schoolers to Northern Arizona University for the Lunar Legacy Invitational.
The invitational is a nationwide robotics competition where student-made robots attempt to do the same tasks as a NASA robot on the moon, including picking up soil, traveling up a crater, and trekking through sand.
“I just think it’s so much fun to get past certain challenges,” said Nicholas, one of the members of Thatcher's Flaming Llamacorns.
So, when the team of brainiacs, found out they won the Lunar Legacy grand prize, which was an all-expense paid VIP NASA experience in Cape Canaveral, Florida, they were beside themselves.
“I was motionless, frozen, I don’t know,” said Nicholas.
”I cried,” said Mr. Carrell.
Mr. Carrell knows a robot isn’t the only thing that’s being built here.
”Not only does it give my students a big bolster to their own sense of self-worth, and tell them they can do great and hard things, it also shows it doesn’t show where your background is or where you’re from, you can do cool things,” he said.