It’s the hard work.

It’s the competition. But it’s also the team dinners.

And those trips to Walmart.

All of that came together last weekend as the Bob-Bots qualified for the FIRST Tech Challenge program’s state competition.

The team did so by winning the Motivation Award during the regional competition held at Bridge Creek High School.

The award is described the following way by tournament organizers: “Sparking others to embrace the culture of FIRST! This team embraces the culture of FIRST and clearly shows what it means to be a team. This judged award celebrates the team that represents the essence of the FIRST Tech Challenge competition through Gracious Professionalism and general enthusiasm for the overall philosophy of FIRST and what it means to be a FIRST Tech Challenge team. This is a team who makes a collective effort to make FIRST known throughout their school and community, and sparks others to embrace the culture of FIRST.”

Earning the award were team members Finley Harrison, Will Finley, Audrey Long, Audrey Heckman, Savana Reherman, Raiden Clarke and Josue Garcia.

They are the Bob-Bots (Team #23703 to be exact) and they are coached by Melody Kuehn and Kurt Kaya.

This collaboration of KHS students has truly become a team, not just over the last few months, but over the years as well, said Kuehn.

Some have been teammates since the third grade when they competed in the FIRST Lego League.

They practice after school until 5 p.m. four days a week.

When they compete out of town, they have team meals on the way home and… “The team has a tradition of stopping at various Walmarts on our way home from meets,” Kuehn said.

That’s just one of the factors that has fused the group, she said.

“These trips have allowed them to bond and see each other out of the school element,” Kuehn said.

••• FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a global nonprofit that was founded in 1989 and was designed to prepare young people for the future through teambased robotics programs.

The programs are intended to build not only skills, but confidence and resilience all while advancing STEM education.

The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) teams design and build classroom-scale robots to follow commands and complete a specific challenge, which is generally designated every September.

That’s when the Bob-Bots began working on their robot.

Since then, they’ve had five league matches, two of which were hosted in Kingfi sher. Other matches were as far away as Goodwell and Lone Wolf.

The state is broken into eight leagues, or regions, in which the 90-some FTC teams are split up.

Kingfisher is in the Hadfi eld League.

The Hadfield and Merrin leagues, which includes 19 total teams, combined to compete at the regional.

Each team played six robot rounds that added to the rankings they had earned from their previous matches.

There’s a lot more to the competitions than what’s happening in the matches.

Teams must create a season portfolio and discuss fundraising, sponsorships, robot design, coding, teamwork, collaborations and community outreach.

“The program is not just about building a robot and running the game,” Kuehn said. “There is a lot of behind- the-scenes work.”

The Bob-Bots have their own Instagram account (@ bobbots23703) that they maintain.

During the regional, they had a 15-minute interview session with judges in which they gave a five-minute presentation and then answered questions from the judges.

Judges also walk around during the day and do extra “pit” interviews with the teams. The “pit” is the space they use to decorate as a team, Kuehn said.

Teams also have different materials to hand out and display about their team. They can also make last-minute fixes or adjustments to their robots during matches.

Kingfisher finished sixth in those rounds and made the playoff double-elimination rounds.

“Unfortunately, our alliance didn’t score enough to win,” Kuehn said.

But the Motivation Award made the Bob-Bots an automatic state qualifier.

Again, said Kuehn, a lot of work went into that as well…and the judges noticed.

“The judges were impressed by their outreach work with the community,” she said. “Being involved in STEM Night at the KUE, two events at the science Museum and STEM camps on Saturdays at the KUE as well.”

While she admits the team has work to do in order to become one of the three from the state meet to qualify for nationals, Kuehn said the Bob-Bots are already striving for it.

“We have two weeks to improve based on the judges’ interview feedback,” she added.

State is Feb. 14-15 at Edmond Santa Fe High School.