Michael Struwig, Jonathan Wotherspoon and Davis Todt kneel down with the team's yellow Lego-block trophies, victorious at the end of the hard-fought 2007 Western Cape robotic championships, backed by team-mates Daniel Stokell, Dylan Vorster, Allister Smith and Daniel Jacobs.
The boys will be keeping a close eye on Sebokeng/Vanderbijlpark region this Saturday, which will be crawling, buzzing and whirring with robots. Forty schools from across Gauteng, the northern Free State, North West Province, and Mpumalanga have entered the northern championships at the Mittal Steel Science Centre.
The Micro Maniacs team from Elkanah House, a school in Tableview, will be battling whichever robots win in the Sebokeng/Vanderbijlpark region at the nationals later this year.
The Micro Maniac's coach, teacher Melany Liebich, said her team has now won the Western Cape championships for two years in a row.
One of her team members, Michael Struwig, a grade nine student, said Elkanah House was the highest-ranked team out of all the 2006 regionals. Sadly, due to a design flaw - a tank-style tread which stripped off in the heat of battle - the Micro Maniacs finished eighth in the nationals last year.
''This year we hope to do better at the nationals,'' predicted Michael, noting pointedly that the students designed their 2007 robot to use four wheels rather than a tank tread. ''And better gearing,'' he added.
