On December 19th, 2023, the Robotics Club hosted its first bake sale of the school year. Like many other clubs at MHS, hosting bake sales is a prime way to gain support and recognition from other students. Specifically, the club’s main reason for the bake sale was to fundraise for supplies and the club.
The Robotics Club ended a couple of years ago due to the lack of funding, and because of COVID-19 and online school, the club had many difficulties starting back up again. Luckily, the club has restarted this year and so far things have gone well. Brian Morrison, the club’s advisor, continued to preach about how excited he was that the club started again.
At the bake sale, a few things that were sold included brownies, cookies, hot chocolate, cinnamon rolls, and many other baked goods that club members had made which resulted in a successful fundraiser. Officer Kyle Huang said, “Overall, for the bake sale, we definitely hit the target money-wise and we managed to sell most things which we didn’t really expect.”
Although the bake sale went well, the club wished that they had done a few things differently. “Some of the food options we were offering weren’t that high in demand, so we could have optimized it so we could have more sales,” stated Vice President Phillip Li. Li also added how they could have advertised more for the bake sale.
The club plans on having another bake sale later in the year as well as having a cash calendar. Officer Dante Federico explained what the cash calendar would be like: “It’s where each day of the month you’ll draw a name from a hat, and each day will be assigned a prize. For example, say I get pulled for the third of March, then I win whatever prize is designated. We would get donations from that.”
The fundraising from the bake sale will surely help this club develop since it will help them get people interested in the club and will help with future projects. Morrison expressed that “the money from the bake sale allows us to purchase more supplies for robots since we have to buy our own materials and parts for it.”
Some short-term goals for the club include building strong teams for each competition since the line-up for who goes changes to give everyone a chance. The Robotics Club also hopes to win or place high in the Botball (KIPR) spring competition at Malden Catholic. Botball is a team-oriented robotics competition for middle and high school students. During the competition, they have to design and build their robots to compete with many other schools across New England. The club has previously participated in this competition and received several awards.
“The competition we’re applying to right now is originally New England and if you win the New England you get sent to the International competition,” says, Huang. That international competition is called FIRST Robotics Competition, which is what the club has been aiming for this year. At this competition, the students along with their mentors work together over six weeks to build a robot that weighs up to 125 pounds. These robots must complete many tasks such as hanging on bars and scoring balls into goals.
The Robotics Club has many events ahead of them this year and is already off to an amazing start. If you want to get involved in the club you can contact their teacher advisor Brian Morrison or any of the officers. You can also follow them on Instagram @malden_robotics.
