Ramageddon, the award-winning robotics team, will hold their robot reveal on Wednesday, March 11, 2026 at South Haven High School.
And what will be revealed?
That question was posed to Coach Kim Wise.
“The Annual Ramageddon Robot Reveal is a way of showing off what the kids have worked on all season,” Wise, who is also the HR Director for the City of South Haven, said. “The kids on the robotics team will tell about what they worked on this season and then we get to show the community the robot we built.”
The Ramageddon Robotics team at South Haven High School was founded in 2013 and since then has competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) and earned honors such as the Chairman’s Award (2020), Impact Award (2025), and multiple state and world championship qualifications. The team qualified for and competed in the FIRST Championship, also known as “Worlds” in 2018.
Wise, who has been part of the team since the beginning, says that she fell in love with the program when her son Tony was on the Robotics team in 2013. “For the first three years, I was a parent volunteer,” Wise says. “Then I co-coached with Kevin Dee, another team parent and the Director of Non-Instructional Services at South Haven Public Schools, so that we could establish some stability for the team. Then in 2021, one of our mentors, Zach Van Huis, stepped up and he is now the Build team coach and I’m the Business team coach.”
Wise says that the Ramageddon Robotics Team is part of a worldwide competition and each January all teams learn what the task is for the school year. “Then we go back to the HS and do brainstorming and then we start doing some prototyping,” says Wise.
Students on the team meet every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm and they also meet on Saturdays from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Between January and March, they design and test their robot – and this year’s robot will be revealed at the March 11 public gathering.
After the public reveal, the team will participate in the Berrien Springs District competition on March 21 and 22, 2026; then there is a competition later in March in Battle Creek. “If we do well enough in the district competitions, we can qualify for the Michigan State Championship which is in April at Saginaw Valley State University,” says Wise.
She points out that the team has been to state competitions three times in the past.
Wise says that she is sold on this program because of what students learn by participating. “We’re big on teaching fearless thinking,” Wise emphasizes, “so we’re teaching these kids that it is okay to fail. We call it fumbling forward. Kids who come on the team often find it difficult to accept failure, so we teach them that failure is okay and that they can go forward from that.”
She also notes that students learn critical thinking skills as they design and build a robot to perform certain tasks. “We want them to think ‘How is this going to work? Will it work? And if it doesn’t work, how can we make it better?”
But there is much more to what young people can get out of being on the robotics team. “We want them to learn to speak in public, be able to talk to potential sponsors, and learn how to budget,” Wise says. “They know we only have so much money to spend on robots and competitions, so how are we going to do that wisely?”
In addition, she says that kids learn about teamwork. “They have to work together,” she says. “Our programmers have to work with our build team and with the business team. They all have to work together to have one final project.”
That final product for this season will be demonstrated on March 11 at 6:00 pm at the Integrated Learning Center at South Haven High School. There is no admission fee and everyone is welcome. For more information, visit the Ramageddon website at www.ramageddon.com
