Hundreds piled into a Fort Mill gym. They cheered. They competed. They drove robots.

The biggest crowd going nuts Saturday for local students probably wasn’t watching basketball or soccer.

Odds are it was the group gathered to cheer robots moving odd-shaped orange manipulatives.

“We are hosting 35 teams,” said Megan McNinch, robotics coach at Sugar Creek Elementary School and organizer of Saturday’s VEX IQ Challenge, emphasizing how fast interest is growing.

“Last year we only had 12 teams,” she said.

Teams, often multiple from each, came from six Fort Mill schools. They came from Charleston, Spartanburg and Cabarrus County, N.C. The robotics event was open to elementary and middle schools. It’s part of a robotics season involving qualifiers and larger events, up to a world championship final.

“The students are creating, building, designing, programming and then competing their robots,” McNinch said. “It’s just really been amazing to see the teamwork.”

Teams earn points for a variety of robot accomplishments, from moving orange pieces into scoring zones to balancing the machines on a seesaw type middle portion of the playing surface. Hundreds of students, teacher-coaches and parents participated.

Hattie Horsley, fourth-grader at Orchard Park Elementary School, tinkered with her teammate Elena Garcia in between matches Saturday. Both were surprised at how big their first event was.

“Probably the competition,” Horsley said of her favorite part. “It’s fun.”

Ben Turner has a fifth grade son on one of the Pleasant Knoll Elementary School teams.

“It’s fun,” he said. “The kids are really into it. They’ve put a lot of time into it, and they all come up with their own designs.”

Turner liked how students could compete, but also enforce so many educational components from design to programming. In a setting where, like sports or other extracurricular activities, lessons abound in working together and finding a winning edge.

“Teamwork is the biggest thing,” Turner said. “And patience, having to endure all the things that can go wrong.”

This story was originally published February 13, 2017 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Hundreds piled into a Fort Mill gym. They cheered. They competed. They drove robots.."