How it All Began:
In September of 1998, the Watertown High School woods teacher, Carll Pallokat, founded Black Magic Robotics. In its inaugural season, with the help of mentors from the community, Team 237 built a robot for the 1999 game Double Trouble that picked up bean bag game pieces called “floppies”, climbed on top of a platform called a “puck” and raised the collected “floppies” 8 feet off the ground to score points. Mentors and student team members traveled to the Philadelphia Alliance Regional at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA with the robot to compete against 52 other high school teams. Team 237 performed well enough at this completion that they qualified to compete at the National Championship in Walt Disney World. The inspiration that was created in this year has driven Team 237 to where we are today.