Stevenson High nets new award — for robot dancing

Move aside, Blue Ribbon award of excellence.

Take a seat in the back of the class, National Merit Scholarship program.

Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire has won a prize that tops them all: an official Guinness World Record.

It wasn’t an educational achievement that set the mark, but a recreational one: The world’s largest robot dance.

The school has been notified that a September 2010 effort to break the record for largest robot dance was indeed successful: With 525 people participating on the school’s football field, Stevenson broke the previous record of 429 dancers.

Officials only recently learned of the honor, which is viewable at guinnessworldrecords.com.

“I’m not sure there are words to properly express what this means. Pantomime might be better,” Stevenson spokesman Jim Conrey joked in an email. “And if we can find 525 people to pantomime a response, then we might have another world record on our hands.”

The record-setting undertaking was staged to coincide with Stevenson’s annual homecoming celebration. Students, teachers and community members gathered for five minutes — a requirement of Guinness World Record officials — and performed the robot, a style in which the dancers try to imitate the stiff poses of robots or mannequins.

Organizers submitted photographs and registration forms to back up their claim.

“The verification process is actually quite extensive,” said Brett Erdmann, the school’s community service coordinator and the chief organizer of the event. “The people at Guinness are sticklers to make sure everything is on the up and up.”

The school’s first application was rejected because of a problem with the paperwork, Erdmann said. A second draft fixed the glitch, he said.

The previous record had been set in May 2010 by students in London.

As part of a Spirit Fest event, the dance also helped the school net $20,000 for the Saving Tiny Hearts Society, a group that helps fund research into congenital heart defects.

Stevenson received a certificate from Guinness to commemorate the record. It will hang in the student activities office, Erdmann said.