By McKenna Cooley
The Robotics Club travelled to Faith Lutheran High School on Saturday, Jan. 9 to participate in the Vex Qualifier competition where their two teams, 7870A and 7870C, competed.
“I think that we placed well because our teams had good, innovative designs that we spent a lot of time perfecting and programming, which resulted in great designs,” Joseph Love, freshman, said. “We have amazing hardware and software engineers on our teams, which helped us a ton. Our teams, no matter how many wins or losses we had, pressed on, and that resulted in getting us being placed well.”
The teams arrived at 7:30 a.m. to start unpacking and begin making final checks on their robots. Each team had to go through inspection by the judges. 7870C had a small problem with sharp edges. The team members filed the edges down and were allowed to continue into matches. Later 7870A’s robot broke, and they didn’t have the time or the means to fix it correctly, so team members modified the robot to get as many points as possible.
The president of the Robotics Club, Connor Graves’, team robot was 7870A and had three wins and three losses. They also received a design award for the robot. Vice President Sarah Litto’s team robot was 7870C and had five wins and one loss. They received the A-MAZE award for having a robust, durable, and well built design. Coronado came in third overall.
“We placed so well because we know how to play to our strengths,” Graves, senior, said. “Instead of trying to take our whole robot apart, we modified it to score as much as possible, even while broken.”
Robotics State Finals will be Saturday, Mar. 12 at Coronado.
