Driver Matt Cortinas, left, and spotter Amanda Halverson watch as LARA (the Laundry Assisting Robotic Apparatus) comes out of the starting gate to retrieve and hang laundry during the Coastal Bend BEST competition. The Port Aransas High School students are members of the Island Robotics team that will advance to the Texas BEST competition after placing second at the Coastal Bend contest. After recalculating the score, judges awarded the Port Aransas High School Island Robotics team second place in the Coastal Bend BEST competition, giving the team the right to advance to Texas BEST next month.

The state contest will be at Texas Tech University in Lubbock on Dec. 1 and 2.

"We will spend another four weeks promoting the program and improving our oral presentation," said team member Melina Fordyce.

Teammate Michael Arnold said, "We need to do some refining on the display and add more technology. At local competition we lost a few points for not using enough technology in our display."

At the Coastal Bend contest, 17 Island Robotics team members participated, including six who were robot drivers. Five of the students were presenters, each addressing his or her own area of expertise, but able to answer questions from the judge in any of the four areas assigned. Chloe Tugell handled general questions, Fordyce handled promotion questions, Seb Tugwell answered technology questions, Brett Brogan answered questions about building the robot and Evan Arnold responded to questions about the robot's design.

Jonathon Girdley was the only one of the drivers to score points. The Port Aransas team placed sixth out of a total of 15 teams entered in the robot tournament.

Initially, the team placed third for the BEST award. However, upon tallying up their score sheets, they found four errors in the team's favor. The team was shorted 145 points, and went to officials to find out if the awards could be redistributed.

"Our scores were close to perfect in every category," said team sponsor Monica Sonnier.

"Our six-year tradition is to eat Chinese food afterwards, so the Asian Buffet on Staples Street (in Corpus Christi) has become a place of celebration for our success," she added.

The team learned late last week that the judges recalculated the score correctly and ruled that Port Aransas was the second place winner in the BEST category.