LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — A growing robotics league combining STEM and sports will have a major competition this week on the University of Kentucky campus.

It’s called the Robot Gladiator League, and it’s a competitive series developed by Newton’s Attic in partnership with the Center for STEM+eXcellence at Morehead State University.

“This is not a typical academic team competition. There are no golf claps in robot Gladiator League,” said Keith Hollifield, chief toymaker for Newton’s Attic. “This is full throated yelling, bring your signs. This is a sport.”

“It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s engaging,” Dawn Cloyd, director of community outreach added. “There are trophies, there are crowds cheering.”

The Robot Gladiator League combines combat robotics with a team sport environment with the goal of growing competitive robotics into something communities could cheer for.

“The program that we run now really is modeled after football, basketball, the typical athletic events that you would find in a high school where we have a scoring mechanism where the score goes up throughout the match,” Hollifield explained. “You have this, this drama and this sports dynamic that the crowd really engages with it.”

This is just the league’s second year, but it has already doubled in size.

“I’ve been yelled at as the ref,” Hollifield said. “I’ve had parents come up and get mad at me, and that’s how I knew we’d hit it. I was like, OK, these guys are passionate enough to feel enough to come up and strongly express their opinion about a decision I made.”

“When we see that kind of response, I know we’re headed down the right path and I if anyone comes out to watch they’re going to feel that and they’re going to see that.”

This season, 16 high school teams are involved in the Robot Gladiator League, which hopes to keep growing across more counties – and ages.

“We do hope to take it down to the middle school level and probably up to the collegiate level once we get good at doing this,” Cloyd said.

“What we’re doing as a fun game and building those skills directly correlates to what they can do in an engineering career down the road,” Hollifield added.

“We like to say this is a sport where 100% of the players can go pro,” said Cloyd, “because they will take these skills one way or another.”

This Saturday, the Robot Gladiator League Forum is taking place at the Gatton Student Center at UK. Teams will battle for spots in the Season II State Championship. The event is open for anyone to attend, and competitions begin at 10 a.m.