Wissahickon High robotics team in documentary spotlight

The robotics team from Wissahickon High School in Montgomery County is featured in a documentary airing nationally on PBS, including 10 p.m. tomorrow on WHYY TV12.

The hour-long documentary, Gearing Up, features four robotics teams from different parts of the country. At Wissahickon, the team began as an engineering contest with only 15 students and has grown to more than 50 members; it has won awards from Philadelphia to San Diego.

The documentary's producers - KETC, a PBS television station in St. Louis, and Story House Productions - narrowed a list of 200 schools that had submitted videos. Producers were looking for unique stories, said Amy Shaw of KETC.

A small, all-girls team from Baltimore, a team of teenage felons from a correctional facility in Colorado, and a suburban group from Missouri also were chosen.

"The Wissahickon kids stood out as a dynamic team," Shaw said. "We liked their spirit and energy, and we were most impressed with the mix of kids. They really functioned as a team, and the school supports them."

Each year, students must build a new robot designed to fulfill the tasks of that year's competitions. During the competitions featured in the documentary, for instance, the robots were required to carry a giant ball across a competition field, with extra points given to the teams with a robot that could carry the ball onto an overpass at the end.

"Every year, you have to start from scratch," said Alan Ostrow, Wissahickon's coach. "They make sure the qualities for one year aren't the same the next year."

Through the team and documentary, Ostrow hopes to get students interested in fields such as math and engineering.

The film follows the Wissahickon students as they attend national competitions with their robot, Miss Daisy - named so that the announcer would say they were "driving Miss Daisy."

The documentary crew began filming in December, just before the team's annual kickoff in January. Because the crew could not be around all the time, it left behind a camera, trained the students, and allowed them to film.

"It was really awesome," junior Ryan Morris said of his reaction to learning he would be in a documentary. "But then they started filming."

During the competitions, cameras followed team members' every move, even when they ate eggs at breakfast. Ostrow described a sense of "buyer's remorse" as the students lost their privacy to the cameras.

However, those regrets seemed short-lived.

"It's one of those things you look back on and say, 'Oh, that was worth it,' " senior Lily Coriel said.