Ben Haas, CHS sophomore, goes over the details and intricacies of the Team RUSH robot during the 2019 Team RUSH Showcase on Feb. 22 at Clarkston High School. Photos by Matt Mackinder

BY MATT MACKINDER
Clarkston News Staff Writer
Clarkston High School’s robotics team – Team RUSH – put on its 2019 showcase event on the evening of Feb. 22 at CHS to rave reviews.
During the showcase, the team reviewed its robot build season, unveiled its 2019 Team RUSH robot, took attendees on a tour of the robot build area, and reviewed their game, Destination: Deep Space, in addition to a media presentation.
Team RUSH is an acronym for Respect, Unity, Spirit and Heart.
“The state of this program is amazing,” said Jason Markesino, a Team RUSH mentor and alumni of the program. “And it’s growing, which is really cool. We have 19 FLL (FIRST Lego League) Jr. teams (kindergartners), so hopefully a percentage of those will move on to the FLL competition. We have eight FLL teams this year and 5-6 FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) teams and our one FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) team. The growth we’re projecting from students continuing through those programs is awesome. The addition of the (working) field has really helped us and it’s a place where on a given night in the fall, we could have 100-200 people in here doing robot stuff, which is super cool.”
That would have been unheard of even 10 years ago, Markesino said.
“We’re getting the students at a younger age and we’re seeing growth in those programs and looking forward to more growth as these students come through the education system here in Clarkston,” he said.
FIRST is also an acronym, meaning For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
Crowned world champions in 2018, Team RUSH has several competitions upcoming, starting this weekend, Feb. 28-March 2, at Kettering University. Other events include the Rocket City Regional from March 13-16 in Huntsville, Ala., and one in Kentwood from March 28-30. If the team qualifies, the Michigan State Championship is April 10-13 at Saginaw Valley State University and the FRC World Championship runs April 24-27 in Detroit at Cobo Center, soon to be renamed the TCF Center.
The showcase was a two-hour event that also had all the program’s past robots on display dating back to the first one in 1997. The halls and classrooms of Clarkston High School’s CSMTech Academy were jammed from start to finish.
One item Markesino noted was how more female students are joining Team RUSH.
“I’ve been with Team RUSH since my freshman year and what really got me interested was being in the CSMTech program here and the lower-level robotics programs (FLL) that got me interested in engineering and continuing on up into high school,” said Emily Jeung, CHS senior. “For the four years I’ve been on Team RUSH, I’ve been on the Business Team, so I’ve been doing a lot of the management things, which I really enjoy.”
She works with Team RUSH about 50 hours or more each week, she said.
“That’s actually more than a full-time job,” she said. “We do this because we like it and not because we have to.”
A classmate of Jeung’s, Jessica Ray, is equally excited to be a team member.
“When I was younger, my siblings were actually on the team, so I got the opportunity to go to all the competitions,” Ray said. “I was then part of the Lego camps that RUSH does over the summer and those kind of gave me an introduction into what FIRST was all about and allowed me to become interested in robotics.”
She appreciates the real-world training the team receives.
“I have become a lot more confident with public speaking and have improved my presentation skills on this team,” she said. “I’ve also gained a lot of mechanical skills and can use pretty much any tool in the shop.”
Another “wow” factor regards the “27” on the Team RUSH logo. Team RUSH joined in 1997, and up until the 1999 season, FIRST renumbered the teams each year based on sponsor names, listed alphabetically. After 1998, the teams got to keep their numbers. Team RUSH was one of the early teams accepted into FIRST. According to Markesino, the programs being accepted in recent years number into the 8,000s.