Iris! Iris! Iris! The story of the 2004 Texas State Botball Championships
It's lunchtime at the all-day Botball competition and, for one group of students, things were not going well. Their robot was malfunctioning. They'd lost every contest in the morning round robin. From other competitors, they received insults and scorn. With the afternoon elimination tournament looming, perhaps it would be easier to quit.
An improbable team from inner-city Houston with enters a state-wide robotics competition. Iris, their captan, is a quiet ninth-grader with a knack for debugging under pressure. Their teacher, a former biology major, learned to program alongside his students in their afterschool robotics club. Together, they embark on impossible quest and emerge transformed.