The Spartan Team’s Newest Robotic MVP: Sir-Paints-A-Lot

He doesn’t speak, but he’s making big statements as the newest artistic talent on the Spartan fields.

A royal robot, Sir-Paints-A-Lot, has rolled into the Spartan student body setting speed records painting the lines on sports fields across campus. It recently made its big debut at the spring pep rally where the student body officially voted on its name after 83 submissions. With the joystick controller in hand, Jay Patterson, football program director and head strength and conditioning coach, rolled his new teammate out of the equipment closet and onto the middle of Clayton Gym. Senior class president Keyen Gupta ’26 presented the top three choices to the excited student body: Sir-Paints-A-Lot, Line-O-Messi and Chalk Norris.

Gupta told his classmates whichever name received the most enthusiastic and loudest cheers would be the winner. The crowd went wild for Sir-Paints-A-Lot.

After assuming the manual and literal, time-consuming task of painting lines and graphics on the school’s four athletic fields, Sir-Paints-A-Lot is living up to its new name. What once took a human three hours to complete, is now being tackled by the robot in just 20 minutes. It needs less human interaction as well. If it encounters an obstacle, it automatically pauses and sends an alert to the controller. 

“It’s like a new member of the athletic staff,” said Patterson. “It’s helped the entire department as a whole.”

Patterson oversees the school’s field lines operation and says the Jetsons-like addition is allowing staff to concentrate more on student support and high-level coaching. The automated machine — programmed to paint the lacrosse, soccer and football fields — uses advanced robotics software with artificial intelligence, requiring very little human interaction. Using a handheld controller, coaches guide the robot onto the grass, select the specific job on the screen — and viola! 

“You just hit the start button and while it's painting, you're keeping an eye on it, but you could be cleaning the equipment shed, taking care of administrative tasks on your phone or preparing for practice,” said Patterson.

Before Sir-Paints-A-Lot, the school hired a professional company who brought their own robot, to paint the initial field lines ahead of each athletic season. But as games, practices, rain and frequent mowing caused the lines to fade, St. Stephen’s coaches and groundskeeping crew stepped in — freehand painting over the original lines using a hand-guided field striping machine that looks like a lawnmower. 

All the coordination involved a lot of planning and logistics, and if someone had an unsteady hand, the ground was bumpy or a coach was interrupted with a phone call, they would have to stop the machine, which resulted in less attractive artwork and lines.

Sir-Paints-A-Lot works year-round throughout each athletic season for practices and games. During its first six weeks on the clock just before spring break, the machine cranked out more than a dozen jobs in record time. At the beginning of lacrosse season, the robot lined Denius Field in 20 minutes–a job that previously took three hours. The robot can accurately zoom Foster Baseball Field in about 10 minutes, and complete Meredith Field in 25 minutes. In addition to sidelines, goal lines and hash marks, the robot can also paint pre-uploaded graphics on the grass, such as the Spartan head mascot or the SPC logo. Hours before the recent baseball game honoring alumni baseball players, the robot added the initials “JK” to the field between home plate and the pitcher’s mound as a tribute to former beloved Spartan baseball coach John Keller. 

Assistant Middle School Athletic Director Jordan Sexton is impressed by the robot’s accuracy, precision and speed.

“It gives that next level of professionalism,” said Sexton. “Potential students who might be interested in athletics look at that and think ‘wow.’”

Before each use, coaches and groundskeeping crews make sure the machine is filled with paint, and are responsible for cleaning the machine after each use so it’s ready for the next round. The robot has been going strong since spring break, with no plans of slowing down.