The grinding of gears and whirring of robots dominated the atmosphere at the Tracy Vex Robotics competition.

Marin Robotics, the Tam District robotics team, participated at the annual event in Tracy County on March 2.

The team, comprised of Redwood and Drake students, had both of its robots pace in the top half of teams, but failed to qualify for the second round of the competition.

Of the 13 Redwood members of the team, nine attended the competition.

Junior Alison Slivon assisted the team with managing and advertising for donations and fundraisers.  Raising nearly $3,000 for the team, Slivon and other team members specifically working on marketing were able to pay for the initial $700 kit required to build the robots and to save for next year’s Vex competition.

The names of the two robots, ZigBot 3000 and HackAttack, were inspired by junior Ziggy Geitheim and advisor Millie Hackworth. Both robots were originally constructed solely of Vex robotics parts, and were designed to pick up bean bags and place them in troughs throughout the arena.

Students from Redwood’s Honors Chemistry and Independent Science Research classes combined to form the Tamalpais District robotics team.

The team was advised by Drake technology teacher Rod Milstead, and other professionals in designing and programming. They were able to engineer, build, and program two competitive robots.

Slivon said that her experiences from being on the robotics team exposed her to a new field of work.

“It was a cool experience that couldn’t be offered elsewhere and it provided exposure to a new field of interest that I never really considered before,” Slivon said.