Four seniors at Suncoast Polytechnical High School in Sarasota are moving on to the World Championship Robotics Competition in Dallas, Texas in May.

Rafael Treminio, Armand Segui, Cannon Spencer, and Quinn Coomer make up The Blackout Robotics Team and have been involved in robotics since their sixth-grade year at Brookside Middle School. In seventh grade, the team won their first state championship and has not stopped since.

“So the four boys made a pact: they’d all go to the same high school to keep the team together. Since then, Team Blackout has earned more than 60 awards, including five state championships,” according to Sarasota Magazine. “On the way home from a championship, they’d already be designing the next robot for the next year,” Joel Kaplin, their now-retired robotics teacher said.

Their dedication and hard work paid off this year as they won the VEX Robotics State Championship on February 19. “The competition took place at Lake Minneola High School in Minneola, Florida, where their custom-built robots performed autonomous and remote-controlled tasks thanks to the team’s know-how that included fitting custom cut parts and coding in C++ VEX Pros.”

Although a piece of their robot broke that day, thanks to their preparation, they were able to craft a make-shift part that held up and helped them to win it all.