It may not technically be a sport, but Coronado High School engineering teacher Bryce McLean coaches his robotics team not unlike he does his football and baseball teams, often referring to it as “the varsity sport for the mind.”

“I like that mentality,” he said. “And I like how you bring in engineers and professionals from the community to work with the students. So, it’s like you have a bunch of assistant coaches working in their position area, but in this case, they’re working in their technical area.”

McLean founded the team “Cougars Gone Wired” in 2008 to provide local engineering students with an extracurricular activity of their own.

The current team of 33 students bustled about Coronado’s tech building Wednesday night in protective eyewear, conducting tests and ironing out the logistics to host this year’s Pikes Peak Regional robotics competition, put on by the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) nonprofit Colorado FIRST.

This year’s bot, named “Godzilla” by the team, tested its climbing ability and overall stability on a makeshift rung in Coronado’s woodshop classroom ahead of the games.

Over the two-day competition, teams will play 80 three-on-three qualifying matches to determine the 24 teams advancing to elimination matches. The winning alliance of three teams will be crowned on Sunday and advance to the world championship in Houston later this year.

This year’s game, Rebuilt, will have competing teams gathering balls referred to as “fuel” and scoring points by launching them into a hub, similar to shooting a basketball into a hoop. Students will guide and take the shots for the robots, while mounted cameras and an elaborate field of tags will independently position them and set their targets.

Hundreds of high school students across from Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, Hawaii, Louisiana, Idaho, Taiwan and Mexico will also be fixing their machines between matches and speaking to award judges about their team, design and season.

Historically held at the University of Denver’s ice arena, this year marks the first time a regional competition will be held at Coronado as the Pikes Peak Regional. Another regional competition will be held in Denver later this year.

Cougars Gone Wired is divided into sub-teams, including mechanics, electrical wiring and programming. Team members learn robotics technical skills during the fall semester before the competition game is revealed early in the spring semester.

Then, the work begins to build their contender from scratch over the next two months.

“They design it, they build it, fabricate it, program it, do everything in that short time period,” McLean said.

While mostly composed of students from the school bearing the namesake mascot, current teammates also come from Colorado Springs D-11’s nearby Palmer High School and Academy D-20’s Village High School.

For Coronado junior and software sub-team member Oliver Kirkevold-Corder, learning about physics and coding concepts, along with a fostered sense of camaraderie, have been among the highlights since he joined the team.

“I used to be OK with math. Like, it was something that I would do just because I had to do it. I’ve now been seeking out math for fun,” he said. “I’m now a student tutor at our school for math just because it’s gotten me so involved.”

Going beyond just annual competitions, McLean explained that the team is also run like a business and includes community outreach, media and financial sub-teams. Among their recent endeavors are “Cents for STEM,” a campaign to secure STEM education funding through the state legislature, robotic demos at local libraries and elementary schools and annual summer camps for middle schoolers interested in engineering.

The team’s current chief business officer, Kelsey Modaff, said that seeing a high school team’s robot at a local science fair when she was 6 years old sparked her curiosity about engineering.

“I had seen the robot just driving around, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” she said. “And I was so impressed that there were kids who were not much older than me able to do this.”

Since starting the team nearly 20 years ago, McLean said many of his former members have gone on to successful engineering careers, with some also serving as mentors on the current team.

“I get jealous all the time,” he said. “I had one of the students who was on the first team who, just a couple years ago, got to go to Antarctica for a month. And I was like, ‘Dude, I want to go!’ They get to go off and do all of those really cool things.

“They, in large amount, are very gifted and end up being very successful.”

The Pikes Peak Regional kicks off at 8:30 a.m. Saturday and will conclude at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. Parking and attendance are free and open to the public.