The Highland Robotics team, The Finger Tightans, is coming into this upcoming season with a younger group of students and a vastly different battlefield. The First Tech Challenge competition will have teams complete this year’s robotics course from their school and send in results to compensate for the lack of in person competitions due to COVID-19. Highland Robotics Coach Tim Surine says it will be a difficult year since the team will have less time to complete their robot due to the hybrid learning model, but his young team is ready for the challenge, “I know that especially this year I’ve got a few kids that are interested in learning to code. The person that had been writing the code for the robot in the last couple of years isn’t here. There’s a couple of kids who want to use CAD, Computer Aided Design, to make some parts. I think just in general we have younger kids and they get to learn a lot of new ideas and that’s fun too.” The Highland team has qualified for the First Tech Challenge world competition for the past four years, and Surine says he’s confident they can get there again. The Finger Tightans will kick off the 2020 season on September 12.