WACC Students Again Qualify for State Robotics Competition
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Lightning struck again for two Warsaw Area Career Center students. On Saturday at Crown Point High School, Warsaw Area Career Center sophomore Patrick Mosher and junior Grant Monsma qualified a second time for state VEX robotics competition. They previously qualified for state competition in December at the Warren VEX Toss Up qualifier in Indianapolis. The state championship will be March 1 at Stonybrook Middle School, hosted by Warren Central. According to their coach, Abbi Richcreek, “They got No. 1 in the qualifying rounds. In the finals, they were semi-finalists, but they still qualified for state VEX competition.” If Mosher and Monsma win at state, they get to move on to world competition in April in California. “There are 14 spots from Indiana that get to go to world,” Richcreek stated. The WACC team lost 50-19 to the Crown Point home teams, but being in the championship round still qualified them for a place at state. “I’m extremely excited that Grant and Patrick qualified not only once, but twice,” Richcreek said. “I hope we can qualify at least another team in February. I hope we are extremely competitive at the state championship regardless of who qualifies.” She noted that Monsma and Mosher have qualified for state at two of the five qualifiers that Warsaw has participated in so far this year. The next qualifying round is Feb. 15, also at Stonybrook Middle School, hosted by Warren Central. Mosher said the final score was 50-19 because their robot’s intake system became unhinged so they really couldn’t do anything. Also, he said, the Crown Point team had a great way of grabbing and putting a lot of balls into the basket during competition. In the competition, the teams’ objective is to score as many points as possible by putting balls into a bucket with their robot. There also is an autonomous part of the contest the robots must complete. For the next contest and state, Mosher said they will work on intake and their robot’s sturdiness so it won’t break so easily. “I wasn’t anticipating (qualifying again),” Mosher said. “I thought we’d have to drop out since we already got a spot.” Despite the struggles they had at Crown Point, Mosher said it was pretty nice to qualify again and take another team with them. Each team is partnered up with another team to form an alliance. If a team advances to state, the alliance team gets to go to state, too. That’s how the Warsaw team was able to qualify for state the first time. “It was pretty surprising,” Monsma agreed. “Our robot was getting pretty beat up so we weren’t sure it would be working by finals.” Monsma said Saturday’s contest proved that they could compete on their own instead of being carried by another team. “There were only 19 teams this time, but a lot were very strong teams,” he acknowledged. With fewer teams, he said they were able to do more rounds. In addition to needing to reinforce the strength of their robot, Monsma said they’re going to try to find ways to counter the type of opponents who beat them in the qualifiers consistently.
