Robotics team member Jonah Paul works on the controller used to guide Twizzler. (Photos/Nancy Hanson.)

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

While athletic teams concentrate on building muscles, Moorhead High School’s Spudnik team is focusing on another kind of strength: They build robots.
Their latest mechanical creation, Twizzler, has achieved the best showing yet, topping the field in one of this year’s regional SMART Robotics competitions.
“We’ve gone from last place in Minnesota in 2024 – and nearly last place in the United States – to winning our first regional competition ever,” says coal Matt Craig. The 2025 Spudnik cohort carried the Moorhead team into the top 40% of Minnesota’s 189 high school teams and near the top third of 3,690 worldwide.
Robotics has been an extracurricular option at Moorhead High for decades. It brings together students with a diverse set of interests and skills, working together to create a robot from a kit of parts and their own ingenuity and resourcefulness.
This year’s team includes 20 students – about a quarter of them female — along with 20 adult mentors. They’re coached by Craig and Tammy Risinger, a paraprofessional at Robert Asp Elementary School. Craig retired in December after 25 years in the Department of Astronomy and Physics at Minnesota State University Moorhead.
“Some of the students are who you might expect,” he says, “kids planning to go to NDSU for engineering. Some are interested in electronics. Others are taking classes like shop and welding, and see this as an a very different opportunity to use those skills. They walk in the door knowing how to use power tools and how to measure things. When you understand something mechanically, you know when it just looks off.”
And, of all things, art. “Several team members has been building visibility for the program by turning our Spudnik logo into jewelry, using the 3-D printer we acquired to print parts,” Craig says. The team has used the tiny Spudniks to promote itself at educational appearances, including programs at Moorhead Public Library and Asp School, displays in the STEM Building at the Red River Valley Fair, and at last year’s Fargo AirSho.
Spudnik Robotics competes with other schools through FIRST, an international program focused on building interest in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Its founder is Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway. Its mission is encapsulated in its name, an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
The theme for this season’s competition was Oceanscape. Teams were challenged to build robots that could toss “coral” (lengths of PVC pipe) onto a skeleton “reef,” then remove “algae” (green rubber balls) and toss them away.
The Moorhead contingent created Twizzler to meet that challenge. The stocky device moves independently, grabbing the would-be coral and algae and gently lifting or flinging them, all guided from a distance by students at the controller.
Craig explains that while SMART meets are competitive, cooperation between teams is a big part of the action. Three teams work together on each challenge. SMART has its own word for this: Coopertition. According to SMART’s website, it means that teams “help and cooperate with each other, even as they compete. It’s about learning from teammates, teaching others, collaborating with mentors, managing and being managed. Coopertition embodies the spirit of competing while assisting and enabling others whenever possible.”
Part of each team’s scoring is based on its cooperative spirit. “When a part breaks during the competition, you’ll have 15 people there in no time trying to be the first to help,” Craig reports.
The Spudnik team meets Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays in the Career Academy’s Flex Lab. Craig, who has coached the team since daughter Sophie was a member in 2011, says the new quarters are a big step up from the group’s initial home in a chemistry lab closet in the old high school. The Fargo robotics team has also met in their spacious quarters.
Craig notes that sponsors, especially John Deere, have played a big part in propelling Spudnik forward. “They’ve been really good about supporting the team for almost 10 years,” the coach says. A mentor from the equipment company helps helps the team with programming its robot. The firm has donated the substantial entry fees for SMART competitions.
Spudnik’s membership has varied over the years, but interest is on the upswing. From a high of 25 pre-COVID, it fell to just four when competition resumed in 2022. That’s steadily risen – nine in 2022-23, 14 the next, and 20 now. Craig’s goal is 25 next year. “We want more who have an interest in the nonmechanical, nontechnical side of things, like blogging or photography,” he suggests. “You don’t have to be a future engineer to be part of our team. Getting the word out is part of the challenge.”
Recruiting for the upcoming season begins next fall. For more information on Spudnik Robotics, go to www.moorheadrobotics.org.