The GEAR program (Get Excited About Robotics) is a program designed for elementary and middle school students to participate in a robotics challenge and increase their interest in STEAM  (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics). Texas Tech Engineering partners with the  Lubbock, Frenship and Midland community and offers competitions for both age groups in a  competitive environment. Each year a new challenge and “game” is presented and students are  tasked with programming a LEGO EV3 robot with competing various objectives by designing,  building and programming the robot. Students have two minutes per match to try to complete as many tasks as they can and earn points for their robot and team. There are several awards  available for the competitors and the top robots will advance to the Regional Meet at Tech. The  GEAR season runs from January – April with the Game Day competition in April and the  Regional Meet in May.

Texas Tech allows each school a maximum of 8 teams with each team usually consisting of 3-4 students for competition. However, we normally allow any student that wants to participate in robotics to still be a part of the HMS Robotics program. We meet after school during the season for an hour long practice at least twice a week. As it gets closer to competition time and if we have more than 8 teams, we have our own competition during practice to see which robots with their programming will score the most points. If a team’s robot does not advance to Game Day, we still have the team members come to the competition to help and encourage. We want all students to be and continue to be involved in HMS Robotics and be a part of the team.