It's NOT all about the robots.

It's about business, fund-raising, mentoring and being mentored.

It's about community involvement.

South River High School's varsity robotic's team, which includes students in 10th - 12th grades, will compete against 60 teams from around the world in Baltimore this weekend.

"The actual robot competition is a small part of what this team does and is," said Ryan Sackett, the team's faculty sponsor.

The school's robotics program is about "gracious professionalism," said Daniel Marker, the team's mechanism mentor.

It's also about dedication to support the project.

The team members in the fall held a variety of interactive community fundraisers including a car wash at the Edgewater Kmart.

They sold raffle tickets for a Safeway gift card, made duct tape flowers to sell at the Crofton Craft Fair in April and collected donations from homeowners that displayed plastic pink lawn flamingos.

The team recently demonstrated its engineering prowess at the Homestead Gardens Fall Festival, Anne Arundel County Leadership Council and offices of local defense contractor SAIC.

In December, the team organized and hosted a First Lego League tournament at South River High School to mentor elementary and middle school students. The event motivated the future engineers to be creative beyond the use of circuits and screws. 

The high school's robot build process for the upcoming Baltimore competition began in early January. Teams were given six weeks to design the perfect robot to send to Baltimore by February 22.

Afterward, it was time to prepare mentally for the competition by working with a practice robot.

South River's robotics team at the Baltimore competition will perform in 10 to 12 matches—including practice and qualifying rounds—and scout the competition along the way.

But these team members don't want to just win the competition. They're aiming higher.

Matthew Parangot, public relations and programming captain of the Build Team, wants to bring home the Chairman's Award, a symbol of overall excellence that a team must work very hard to earn.

If South River wins that or the competition, they'll head to the national championship in St. Louis April 27 - 30.