Robotics Team Press Start to Season
Heading to Brownell-Talbot High School on an early Saturday morning, the Pierce robotics teams of 71414A and 71414Y competed in their first local tournament of the season.
Team 71414A, Smooth Operators, includes driver Andrew Lienemann, programmer Makayla Shefl, builder Brandon Thomsen, film watcher Sawyer Konert, as well as Jenalee McRoberts who handles the social media, parts organization, and the scrapbook.
Team 71414B, The House, includes driver Collin Wessendorf, builder Layne Prince, programmer Kohin Eichberger, researchers Nicholas Fisher and Alexander McKeown.
Smooth Operators finished the day 4-3 and 18th overall, falling in the round of 16 in the tournament to teams from Millard North and Elkhorn North. Pierce was paired with Park Hill, a team from Kansas City.
This is the second meet for Smooth Operators and Shefl notes that they had more time between rounds at this tournament.
“We had more time to like practice driving and fix the robot, and we knew what we needed to fix from last time, so our robot performed better,” Shefl said.
Smooth Operators also saw their skills score increase to 108.
The House finished the day 2-5 and 32nd overall.
Although they did not finish as high as they wanted, Prince said they do have areas they can focus on during practice the next couple of weeks.
“How we pick stuff up and how we're going to change the color switchers,” Prince noted as areas to improve.
A challenge all teams face this year is having to move pins and cups. Points are scored by stacking pins and cups onto the goals. The challenge is that robots can only hold a maximum of one pin and one cup at a time. Prince agrees that the cups and pins provide an extra challenge.
“Probably just the fact there's a carry limit of one,” Prince said.
New this year to the robotics team are Isabella Skillstad, William Blank and Christian Hansen, who will be on Team 71414F, Falling Apart.
All three teams will compete at the University of Nebraska at Omaha on Saturday, November 21.
