Programming Progress
By Meredith Krienert
On Saturday, January 24, the robotics teams embarked on a competitive journey at a VEX robotics tournament in O’Neill.
Teams from Pierce, 71414A and 71414Y, faced challenges throughout the day and ultimately led team A to place eighth overall out of 38 teams, with a total win-loss ratio of 5-1 going into finals. Team 71414Y ended in 37th place overall, finishing with a record of 0-6.
Team 71414 A, The Smooth Operators, consists of Andrew Lienemann, Makayla Shefl, Brandon Thomsen, and Sawyer Konert. Team 71414 Y, The 6 Ultimate Lifeforms, consists of Layne Prince, Kohen Eichberger, Alexander McKeown, Collin Wessendorf, Ethan Chaney, and Nicholas Fischer.
Both teams are sponsored by Treva Dostal.
"O'Neill is always a "favorite" meet for us, as our departure time was an hour earlier, and the tournament is typically smaller than most of the events we attend. Both teams accomplished firsts as the Smooth Operators were named the Innovate Award winners and The 6 Ultimate Lifeforms ran their best skills score of the season to finish 18 out of 38 teams,” Dostal said.
Teams are randomly assigned a partner and face off against two other randomly assigned partners. Alongside their robots “Robert” and “No”, along with their partners, the teams were able to overcome many obstacles. Team 71414A, The Smooth Operators, were partnered with 5155E Cereal Killers from Cross County in Stromsburg. Team 71414Y was not selected for the tournament.
Overall, the competition was a success, but it still came with its difficulties.
"The thing I am most proud of our robot is definitely our hook because it allows us to get a point swing in many situations,” Andrew Linemann, the driver of team 71414A, The Smooth Operators, said. “We are going to improve our middle goal scoring because that was a really big thing in skills, and even in the tournament that we sacrificed for the double park.”
The 71414A Smooth Operators team was awarded the Innovate Award.
“I felt our team did very well this weekend, and I am proud of our innovative award,” Shefl said.
This award recognizes teams with an exceptionally effective, well-documented engineering design process for a unique, "outside the box" robot feature or strategy. The Smooth Operators designed a mechanism allowing a "double" park at the end of the competition, which very few teams have been able to accomplish during the season.
Although team 71414 Y did not do as well as they had hoped, they still have lots of potential this season.
"Our main goal this year is to make it to state, and the most challenging part about the competition was the match-ups," Eichberger, from team 71414Y, said.
Next competition for both teams is Saturday, February 7, at the Melee on the Mount, hosted by Elkhorn Mount Michael. As the robots improve and the teamwork strengthens, the seasons ahead look promising.
