SAN DIEGO — A group of San Diego high school students is celebrating its historic victory over an elite field of college science students. In this Zevely Zone, I went to Scripps Ranch to meet the winners of the 2020 RobSub.
Some of the most elite colleges in the country participated in the 2020 RoboSub, an international student competition where student teams from around the world design and build robotic submarines. So, when a group of San Diego high school students sank the competition, you could only imagine their surprise.
Team Inspiration brought home almost $6,000 in prize money.
"All of our team was online and so through Zoom. We were like 'Oh my gosh' did this really happen?" said Colin Szeto.
Colin is the captain of Team Inspiration, a group of 13 - 17 year old students who took down big-name schools like Cal Tech and Duke and San Diego State with its win.
"It was a lot of hard work. This was over about three months and toward the last couple of months, our team met every single day," said Colin.
Thirty-three schools competed in the RoboSub 2020. This year because of COVID-19 all of the sub-submissions were made online.
"I was really surprised," said Mabel Szeto.
The student said her team used distance learning as a submarine secret weapon to grow closer.
"The team has always felt like a family to me but even more so over the online space where we can't see that many people in person," said Mabel.
Their sub is named Orange and these self-starters programmed it to self-navigate.
"I guess we are still in shock that they actually won first place," said team mom Teresa, who still can't believe the students made a self-swimming robot work underwater.
The students are hoping to win back-to-back championships. They are already working on RoboSub 2021. So what did it take for youngsters to submarine schools like SDSU and UC San Diego?
"The vibe on this team is very casual. We like to have a lot of fun as well so usually at the end of our meetings, we'll have a little gaming session," said Shruti Natala.
The student said the squad plans to celebrate the victory of its sub success with a game of Minecraft.
I asked if Team Inspiration is smarter than the college students that they beat in the competition.
Colin told me, "I don't think so. It's just all of that hard work and bringing the team together to work towards a common goal every single day."
"Team Inspiration!" the students yelled together.
The students would like to thank their two main sponsors, Northrop Grumman and Qualcomm.