By Nathan Park
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From April 15 to 21, MHS VEX Robotics teams 1973 A, B, D and F competed at the VEX Robotics World Championships for the third year in a row. Though they did not take home the championship trophy, the challenges they faced at the competition helped them grow as a team and as people.
“It’s really not about necessarily winning or losing. It’s about the journey that got you there. People can say that they won, but how many can say that they had that close friendship or that foundation that will make them successful in the long run?” said Team 1973B captain Senior Ryan Taketa, who was also the team’s driver and programmer.
Compared to previous experiences at the world championships, this year proved to be one of the most challenging. Each year the style of the game changes and this time, contestants had to use their robots to gather bean bags and place them in a patch of ground with their alliance colors for one point, in a trough for five points and in a high goal for six points. To win the match, a team must have the highest score in the arena. Because bean bags have an amorphous body, they were difficult to work with. “The bean bags, they don’t have a specific shape to hold so, either they got stuck in your drive or they were hard to pick up because they weren’t a fixed shape,” said Taketa. Team 1973 D captain Senior Richie Chio added, “For some reason the (bean bags) created static electricity when you ran through them and that would mess up the sensor values and things like that.” The technical difficulties caused by the objects kept most of the four teams behind the others.
Language barriers also presented a challenge. While they found it interesting to have 200 different nationalities competing at the tournament, it made it hard to communicate with foreign allies. “There was two or three times that I was paired up with a Chinese team and it was really hard to figure out what we were doing. It’s a team game so you need to have a plan of what you are going to do during the match and need to know what the other guys are going to do,” explained Team 1973 A captain Junior Clayton Dailey.
Despite these challenges, the teams performed to the best of their ability. Team 1973 A went the farthest in the tournament, making it to the quarter finals, ranking third in the Math Division and only losing one qualification match, even though their robot broke on the first day of the competition. “Honestly the first day, we weren’t looking too good. Some parts on our robot broke and that is where we got that one loss, but we were able to fix it and win the rest of the qualification matches,” explained Dailey. The other teams were not able to make it past the qualification rounds, because they were not chosen to make an alliance by the top ranking eight teams.
Through their struggle at the world championship, they learned how important it is to remain resolute in the real world despite all the challenges they face. “It’s a lesson you can take into real life. That you think you found a solution to something and you think that you’re OK, but there will be problems that arise that will tamper with your ability to perform, but you have to face them without giving up,” explained Chio.
The tournament also gave them a chance to make friends with people from all over the world. “It was easy to find someone you had good compatibility with and you made a new friend right there. It was fun because you get to expand your horizon with your views of the world; you see things past this little island,” Chio said. Since coming home from the tournament, MHS’ VEX Robotics have been working on making improvements to their teams’ robots in hopes of having another chance at the world championship next year. They plan on creating a more visible website on the internet to attract stronger alliances and preparing their robots for the challenges in next year’s arena.
