Staff photos / J.T. Whitehouse From left, Madeline Moliterno, Landon Frank and Dominic Andy, members of the Mahoning County Career & Technical Center Griffin Robotics Team 7882W, show the reach of their robot and how it will compete at the World Championships to take place in Dallas, Texas, next month.

CANFIELD — The Mahoning County Career & Technical Center’s Griffin Robotics Team 7882W is heading to Dallas, Texas, in May to compete in the VEX V5 Robotics World Championship Competition. It has been a long road that began last May.

MCCTC has long been a hotbed for technology and robotics in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) classes. Six years ago, STEM teacher Walter Baber brought science teacher Rachel Naylor on board and the two were able to run a VEX robotics competition on the local level with five Northeast Ohio counties.

“The first year, we had 16 teams competing,” Baber said. “Now we have over 50 teams involved.”

VEX Robotics is for students from elementary school through college and is an offshoot of FIRST Robotics.

At MCCTC, the teams have filled a hallway showcase with trophies and awards won at various regional and state events. This year, the team will compete for a world title as one of Ohio’s top 21 robotics teams.

The team is made up of MCCTC seniors Madeline Moliterno, Landon Frank and Dominic Andy. Their official robot team number is 7882W, but they are also known as “Fishes Outta Water.”

“We all came from different backgrounds and school robotics teams,” said Moliterno of Austintown Fitch. “We were like fish out of water, thus the name and the reason we wear fishing hats and vests as our team apparel.”

In May, at the world championships, the challenge for next season is released and teams all over the world can begin work on a robot that will handle the challenge and hopefully get through regional and state competitions.

“Once the game is released, we can start planning and designing,” Madeline said.

This year’s competition calls for robotic teams to capture 24 plastic rings and place them on nine special poles (five mobile and four stationary) to score points. The competition is two minutes long and the first 15 seconds are on the robot’s programming, as it will be on its own. After 15 seconds, a driver takes control and continues the game effort.

Madeline’s position with the team is the “notebooker,” or person who keeps records of what the team does and how the team solves problems. For this year’s robot, she has recorded more than 900 pages in three binders to serve as the log of the team’s trials, errors and successes.

Dominic, also from Austintown Fitch, serves as the team’s designer. It is his task to come up with the right design and for this year, the MCCTC science classes helped him make some smart moves. He said Naylor’s chemistry class taught him about material properties.

“Robots average 16 pounds up to 25 pounds,” Andy said. “After 25 pounds, the robots are too slow to win, so we looked at a lighter robot around 20 pounds. We used nylon nuts and aluminum screws to cut 20% off our robot’s weight.”

The lower weight helped in supporting the eight motors that are allowed on a competition robot.

The final team position is driver, and that task goes to Landon of South Range. It is his task to know the robot and handle it during competitions. He said it is all about coordinating and working together.

“We’ve had arguments, but we’ve learned to come together and move forward,” Landon said.

To get to the state competition, the team had to first get through regionals. The team competed in Akron in February and it was Madeline’s notebooks that won the day.

“I started my first notebook on May 1, 2024,” Moliterno said. “I have now written over 900 pages and three volumes, documenting everything we have done. It includes successes, failures and overcoming those failures.”

That won a notebook award in Akron, which automatically qualified the team for the state competition.

To work on the robot involved after school sessions, but the team wanted to do more. Dominic’s father was a racecar driver and had a good size garage that allowed the team to set up a practice pen and had good workspace and tools to be able to make adjustments on the robot.

Madeline said while others were out enjoying the weekends, the team was getting their own enjoyment working on their robot. Their devotion to the team helped propel them and make the team highly competitive enough to make it to state and beyond.

The state competition was in Dayton last month and team 7882W placed 21st, which was enough to qualify for the world competition.

The team will compete with 820 teams from 50 countries May 6 to 8. The robot and equipment is going to be driven down by a former MCCTC graduate and supporter of the STEM program, Dillon Hartman. The team members will be flying down with the mentors.

While the team is focused on the competition right now, they will be looking at the VEX U category for university students. Dominic said he is looking to continue his robotic endeavors when he attends Rose-Hulman College this fall.

“I’m looking at engineering and would like to get into the aeronautics field,” he said. “The school does have a VEX U team, and I hope to be on it.”

Landon is looking to attend Youngstown State University for electrical engineering, and Madeline will attend Allegheny College on a full-ride scholarship, where she wants to pursue product design.

Both said they would want to be on a robotics team and if those schools don’t have one, they will do what they can to get one started. In essence, the close-knit team members could be facing each other in college robotics competitions.

As far as Baber is concerned, this has been an outstanding year and a really strong team heading to Texas. It also means some new young robotics fans are coming on board.

“It will be a Cleveland Browns building year,” he said. “We’ll be starting fresh for next year.”

Moliterno is the daughter of Nicholas Moliterno and Erin Corll. Frank is the son of Thomas and Collett Frank. Andy is the son of Mark and Laura Andy.