Two years ago, Coral Park Senior High School’s RamTech59 learned that they were crowned champions of the Orlando Region in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.
Students cried. Teachers cheered and hugged.
Led by Carlos De La Hoz, who also goes by Charlie, RamTech 59 has been getting better since he took over in 2015.
However, De La Hoz never thought he’d take over the program and help it get to where it is now.
“My college degree was in industrial arts, which included a lot of the different types of manufacturing processes,” he said. “For my first 10 years, I was a graphic arts and woodshop teacher.”
De La Hoz graduated from Florida International University with a degree in industrial arts in 1985 and joined Coral Park Senior High School.
“I shared the duties, but I also coached football and wrestling at a very high level,” he said. “We were a top ranked wrestling team in the state for many years.”
He soon realized he didn’t like being the athletic director, so he went back to the classroom.
Just across the hall from De La Hoz, Marcos Alonso taught engineering.
“He said ‘Charlie, you’re handy. Why don’t you come with us to robotics?’” De La Hoz said. “And I knew about what they were doing.”
De La Hoz was impressed after attending an event with the program.
“I was like ‘Oh my God, this is so cool.’ It was at that point that I started doing the transition, not knowingly doing it, but just getting more involved.”
This is when De La Hoz decided to step in, but the program was facing problems.
“We almost didn’t have the funding to compete,” De La Hoz said.
Together with teachers and students, De La Hoz came up with an idea: start a summer camp.
The summer camp began in 2015 after receiving a grant from FIRST, and the project quickly became successful.
“We got the grant from the FIRST Robotics Competition, which is a hardship grant to pay. And we decided, at the time, which I had some mentors coming back and helping me, that we need to open a summer camp to fund our program, our robotics.”
In 2018, RamTech50 qualified for Nationals in FIRST Robotics, and the camp expanded.
A year later, the program had a top-50 robot in the world and has been very competitive since then.
Alexis Garcia, a junior at Coral Park who is part of RamTech59, says he’s learned a lot from De La Hoz.
“From ninth grade, he’s been teaching us the very basics of what engineering is and getting us into it.” Garcia said.
“Teachers show their students what engineering is, but not a lot of them go that extra step to get us hands-on and looking and feeling how engineering works.”
Graduates from the program have gone on to work for major companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook
Some work as motorsports engineers or as aerospace engineers for Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Edgar Uribe, who graduated in 2019, now works as a motorsports engineer for Cole Custer, the part-time driver of the number zero in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
“Charlie is just incredible,” said Uribe. “I tell people all the time that I am where I am in my life because of him.”
Uribe says that De La Hoz believes in all his students and, when you’re a student, that’s helpful.
“That makes you realize you have someone in your corner who knows that you can do good in this world. When you have a teacher like De La Hoz who cares about you and believes in you, that makes you feel better about yourself.”
Juan Rodriguez, a Coral Park teacher who helps with the program, loves working with De La Hoz.
“The engineering business can be tough because it’s obviously very math and science based, but you must work with a lot of people,” said Rodriguez. “When he sees the students smiling because their work on the robot is so successful, he knows they are having fun.”
For De La Hoz, the number one thing to him is not just winning or making the robot look good.
It’s seeing his students succeed.
“It’s just amazing what the kids are doing and where they are going,” said De La Hoz.
“They pursue their dreams and they do it. They make it. Giving them that confidence and giving them the knowledge and the background to be able to do it makes me feel like I did a good job teaching them. That’s the biggest joy.”
