But teams from 11 Greater Cincinnati high schools were showing off their brains instead of their brawn.

BEST, or Boosting Engineering Science Technology, is a competition that involves teams of high school students building robots from a standard set of materials in six weeks.

The robots, which essentially are mechanical arms controlled with joysticks, scoop as many plastic balls and tennis balls as they can in 3-minute heats.

The students also had to keep journals about the experience, give an oral presentation, create a table display and design T-shirts.

The teams were judged separately on those elements, with Scott County High School in Georgetown, Ky., and Ursuline Academy placing first and second, respectively.

Roger Bacon High School won this year's robotics competition, followed by Loveland High School. Those four schools will move on to the national BEST competition at Auburn University Nov. 19-20.

Saturday's event was held at downtown's Albert B. Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center.

Richard Newrock, dean of the University of Cincinnati's College of Applied Sciences, said the event is supposed to be fun while teaching teamwork and problem solving. Mission accomplished, Newrock said.

"The whole point is to give them the same resources and let them come up with whatever creative ideas they have for how to use them. These students have shown a lot of very innovative ideas," Newrock said. "Education today is too cookbook. The American economy is based on creative engineering, so we've got to encourage that."

The robots had many different styles, from large baskets that could scoop multiple balls at once, to PVC pipe that could pick up only one ball at a time. Roger Bacon's robot had coat hanger wire on its rectangular-shaped basket that allowed it to move more freely on the carpet and more effectively scoop the balls.

Kevin Gebhardt, 17, a senior at Roger Bacon, said using the joystick to control the robot arm was frustrating. At times, it was like using a computer mouse that doesn't work properly.

"There are three motors, and they aren't always in sync with the joystick," Gebhardt said. "Sometimes there was a delay between moving the joystick and the robot's movements."

Glen Este High School led the competition most of the day, only to fall to fourth place in the final round. Glen Este's T-shirts read: "We're going to kick your bots."

Amber Kretschmar, 17, a Glen Este senior, said a blown fuse tripped up their robot in the finals.

"But we learned a lot of difficulties," Kretschmar said. "We probably went through 15 or 20 designs when we were building it, and another 10 designs for the electrical parts. One idea always led us to another."

Cheryll Dunn, an associate dean at UC's College of Applied Sciences, said this year's event was a huge success because the number of high schools participating doubled from last year.

"Between designing the robots, keeping journals and the oral presentation, there is a lot of work for them to do in six weeks," Dunn said. "So the only way they can do it is to work as a team. And that's the goal - to get them interested in technology, engineering and teamwork."

E-mail dklepal@enquirer.com