ST. LOUIS—After getting past its first challenge of making it to St. Louis, Franklin High School’s Robotics team 1610 finished the final day in 22nd place in the Galileo division.

On Wednesday, the team loaded up on a bus of Triple Helix, a competitor from Newport News, after learning of mechanical issues in the bus that was originally supposed to take them, just hours before they were set to have left.

“[Teams] 422, 540, 1086, and 2363 were extremely helpful in working with us, leaving late after waiting for us to get to their locations, and overall helping us get to St. Louis to compete (and back home again),” said Kyle Johnson, a team 1610 mentor who helped set up the trip.

Members from the Franklin community also came together to attempt to help the FHS team get a bus.

The next challenge was getting the robot ready for inspection, after making some pre-planned changes to improve the robot’s speed and strengthen the ball pickup arm.

After passing the inspection, the team entered its first day of competition on Thursday and came away with a 2-3 record, ranking it 61st of 100 teams in the division at the end of the day. On Friday, they played four matches, and won them all, bringing it up to a record of 6-3, ranked 25th out of 100. Despite some issues with the program that they were able to resolve, the team put up its highest score of the year of 265 points on that day.

After replacing a broken ball pickup arm, the first qualification match on Saturday resulted in another win, boosting its record to 7-3, or No. 22 out of 100.

Team 1610 was the highest-ranked Virginian team in the Galileo Division, and they were tied for the highest rank of all Virginia teams competing.

Unfortunately, they were not selected to play Saturday afternoon in the elimination alliances.

Team 2363, also known as Triple Helix, was selected as a member of the fifth-seed alliance that went on to win the division.

“Overall, we were very pleased with our team’s performance,” Johnson said. “It is always amazing to us how such a small-town team with minimal resources can go out and be competitive with the best teams from across the globe. It just goes to show that we are doing something right.”

Cindy Mitrovic, 14, said the inspiring experience would remain with her for her entire life.

“The world championship has exposed me to boundary-pushing innovation and eloquent engineering the likes of which is perspective-altering,” she said in an email. “It gave me the opportunity to both be a part of, and observe, the rigor of a competition in which there is true, raw clashing of brainpower.”

Coach Elizabeth Burgess also made time to take the students to see the Gateway Arch on Wednesday, as well as a Cardinal’s game on Friday evening.

“Liz tries very hard to get out and enjoy the city because some of the students on the team would never have the experience otherwise,” said Johnson.

Cindy’s brother, George Mitrovic, agreed that it was an amazing experience.

“I’m happy I was part of it,” he said. “The atmosphere and the quality of competition in St. Louis is something I’ll never forget.

“Earlier this year I never expected we would have come as far as we did, and thats what made it all the better. It was an amazing year for Franklin Robotics.”