Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, the CAPS building is alive with students from schools across the district, all gathered for robotics. Through the first door on the right, some people are fishing through tangles of wires and cords, constructing models out of spare parts. The next room is filled with programmers and coders glued to laptops and whiteboards, and in the last room, a few are experimenting with the heavy machinery. During the regular season, junior Mat Orzechowski can be found with the build team, designing or constructing the robot. But until the commotion hits in a few months, he is free to relax, such as by trying to learn junior Wes Caldwell’s recursive formula for prime numbers.

Orzechowski started robotics through an earlier branch of the same program (FIRST) in fourth grade. In this branch, the First Lego League, members learned the basics of robotics through building small Lego robots that could perform basic tasks and challenges.

Orzechowski later joined FRC, the First Robotics Competition, his freshman year, and he enjoys it a lot more. Piled on top of several AP classes and the traditional stress of junior year, robotics now occupies a lot of his free time.

“During January, any snow days that we have from school, if it’s not too bad on the roads we are here at CAPS so we have all day to work,” he said. “We pray for snow days.”

The build season begins the first weekend of the new year. Once the competition information is released, the teams have six and a half weeks to build a robot that can complete the task effectively. When the time is up, the robots compete head-to-head in an arena.

“It’s pretty competitive, but it’s definitely friendly competitions,” Orzechowski said. “Nobody really has archrivals per say – even at competitions, if you forgot a tool you didn’t bring, teams will lend it to you.”

Last year, the challenge was to create a robot that could throw Frisbees. Since build season doesn’t start for another couple of months, the team is currently rebuilding the machine from last year for a competition in November.

“We’re constantly making changes on it [the robot],” Orzechowski said. “Even when we go to competition, it’s never set in stone. We’ve gone before with a robot that wasn’t 100 percent done.”

Most of the activities that occupy Orzechowski’s time, such as cross country, are through the school. Robotics is a way for him to spend time with a different group of people.

“We’re pretty close,” he said. “These guys here, they’re all the people I know that go to other schools, because there’s just a couple that go to Southwest.”

However, the group has greater implications for Orzechowski. He wants to eventually study engineering, so robotics could be a stepping stone to a future career. But regardless of where it might take him, Orzechowski finds being a part of the team more than worthwhile.

“I really like building, designing and fabricating stuff – that’s the part of the team that I’m involved in,” he said. “It’s so much fun because we get to mess around with big machinery and build a robot that actually does stuff and is controlled by us – in such a short period of time, too. I don’t know how to quantify what it is – it’s just lots of fun.”

More on Mat Orzechowski

• Favorite Color: “Sky blue pink. There are other colors that are combined – why can’t I combine sky blue and pink? They’re both quality colors.”
• Meaning of Life: 42
• Best Time Period: “The 1950s, because they were so great. Malt shops.”