KVIG Informative

Most robotics teams have a school’s resources behind them — a classroom, a budget, a coach on staff. One team competing at UNLV this year had none of that.

Student engineers from across Southern Nevada, the country and the world gathered at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center this spring for the FIRST Robotics Competition Las Vegas Regional, where teams spent months designing, building and programming robots from scratch before facing off head-to-head.

One of the competing teams, Balikbayan Bots, isn’t affiliated with any single school. Its members are Southern Nevada students who don’t have a robotics program at their own school, brought together instead as an independent team.

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Ellie Cruz, a Las Vegas student and member of Balikbayan Bots, said competing without a dedicated classroom or campus support means learning to problem-solve under pressure in ways a fully resourced school team might not have to. When the team is missing a part mid-competition, she said, they have to improvise a replacement on the spot rather than falling back on a school’s supply closet.

FIRST Nevada, the nonprofit organization that runs the state’s FIRST Robotics programs, describes its mission as promoting STEAM education access across Nevada — a mission that, for students without a school-based program, depends entirely on independent teams like Balikbayan Bots existing in the first place.

The winner of the Las Vegas Regional advances to the FIRST Robotics Championship in Houston, competing against teams from schools with far more institutional backing.

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Cruz said the skills the competition demands — working through high-pressure situations, adapting when the plan falls apart — carry over well beyond the robotics field, whether it’s a school exam or any other unpredictable situation life throws at a student.

UNLV hosted teams with corporate sponsors, dedicated school labs and paid coaches. It also hosted a handful of students who built a competitive robot with none of that — proof that the biggest barrier to STEAM access in Southern Nevada isn’t student interest. It’s what’s waiting for them, or not, when they get to school.