Members of the Finger Tightans configure their competing robot. Photo by Sam McIntosh.

After competing at the FIRST World Robotics Championships last spring the Highland High School robotics team, the Finger Tightans, are motivated to compete at the FIRST Tech Challenge-Iowa Championship this weekend.

For several years the Finger Tightans have advanced to the state level, but have never gone further besides being a wild card draw for worlds last year.

Senior Nathan Butler says the team has been working hard to get to this point, “The competition has really gotten a lot tougher, at least as a senior I’ve been in this program for four years so I’ve seen this thing grow. So this year’s been harder than ever for us, so we really tried to step up our game on not only the robot categories. So we brought in a lot of new concepts, the robots use some computer-aided design, more programming knowledge, that type of stuff. But we also stepped up our community outreach, looking for sponsors, trying to make FIRST Tech Challenge as loud as possible in our local community.”

The Finger Tightans have been active in the community, from hosting robotics camps and doing demonstrations at summer festivals, to visiting senior residence centers and hosting a Halloween dance. The team encourages the community to come support them at the Iowa Championship this Friday and Saturday at the Marriott Hotel in Coralville.


The Finger Tightans constructed this practice field in a Highland classroom to replicate the field they’ll compete on at state. Photo by Sam McIntosh.