On November 18, the Duncan Middle School Robotics Team went to its yearly team qualifier at Newcastle Middle School and qualified for state.

The qualifier is a competition where teams from all around the region come to compete in an attempt to qualify for the state championship. Only the top six teams moved on to the state level. The state competition is set for Dec. 9.

This year, the focus the team was learning about was Hydrodynamics. The team decided to talk about the fact that Duncan’s water pressure is not the best because of calcium build-up in the water pipes. They had to come up with the problem, solution, and a way to inform people of the problem and how to fix it.

But that’s not all.

They also had to program a robot to interact with “missions.” Missions are little Lego buildings that the team built and tweaked themselves, even though they had to use the set that the officials had. That way there was no cheating.

The Team, led by Sherry McGhghy and her husband Eric, said they believe the team did a great job on its presentation.

At the Qualifier, the team did have a few bumps in the programs for the robot, but did get first place in Robot Design. They also received a trophy, which is in the school trophy case.