Warsaw Robotics Club is gearing up for its 2014-15 season with its first competition Oct. 18. Up to 64 teams will be involved in the VEX Robotics contest at Jay County High School, Portland, according to Warsaw Area Career Center teacher and club co-coach Abbi Richcreek. Warsaw is taking three teams – A, B and C – to the first contest. Qualification rounds will be from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., with the championship round from 1:30 to 3 p.m. “Our three teams all have seniors on them. I would hope we would fare very well. We’ve been preparing since last April designing our robots. (The students) had all their parts since the summer to design and build,” Richcreek said. “I’m very optimistic about our outcome in the competition, even though it’s the first one of the season.” There are about seven VEX state qualifiers between now and March, Richcreek said. If a Warsaw team wins one of the qualifiers, it will go on to state competition March 7. By winning state, a Warsaw team could go on to world competition in Louisville, Ky. Co-coach Paul Zakaria said, “I’m expecting us to come ahead of the pack. Our teams have put in a lot of preparation early on I’m sure other teams haven’t, so I’m sure we’ll take the cake.” Richcreek said the club meets every Wednesday for two hours after school, but students also work on their robotics at home. The game for the VEX Robotics competitions this year is “Skyrise,” with a focus on building upward. Matches are played on a field and two alliances, red and blue, composed of two teams each, compete in each match. The object of the game is to attain a higher score than the opposing alliance by scoring colored cubes in floor goals, on posts or on their Skyrise, by owning posts and by building their Skyrise sections. A bonus is awarded to the alliance that has the most total points at the end of the autonomous period. There are 44 cubes, 22 red and 22 blue, and 14 Skyrise sections in a VEX Skyrise match. Each robot will have one cube available as a preload and seven Skyrise sections available to be placed in its alliance’s autoloader during the match. Forty cubes will start at designated locations on the field. There are 10 posts of varying height around the field and each alliance has one Skyrise base, the rules state. Junior Ethan Horst is confident about the competition this year. “I feel like this year is going to be better than last year because it is purer about design,” he said. The robots are easier to execute conceptually, he said, but harder to build in reality. Last year was based on a concept very new that they hadn’t thought of before, but the design this year is more familiar. With everyone being more familiar with the competition this year, he said that could make the contests more fierce. “Compared to previous years, we’re focusing on more high-quality parts. We’re choosing parts with more care,” Horst said. His goal for this season is to at least get to state. He would like to make world, but said he didn’t want to be overconfident. Richcreek said if a team makes it to world this year, an anonymous donor will help fund the Warsaw team’s travel expenses. “That adds incentive,” Horst said. Senior Grant Monsma was on the Warsaw team that qualified for state competition twice last year. “We’re much better prepared this year than last,” he said. He thanked various anonymous donors, and Richcreek added a thanks to Biomet and Symmetry Medical for their support. “We’ve got a much higher quality robot prepared,” Monsma said. “We designed it out ahead on the computer using 3D modeling. We’re also putting a lot of sensors on the robot so we can tell where it’s at all times and it can do a lot on its own without a driver.” He said his goal this year would be to make it to state again. “Hopefully, we’ll win state and make it to world, but that’s a long shot,” he said. The biggest roadblock to state and world may be the returning teams from other schools, he said. “There’s just a lot of other strong competition out there, strong teams we faced last year will be back. We’ll have to work our way back this year,” Monsma said. Being a freshman, Cameron Bowell hasn’t been to a competition yet, but said he likes the robotics club being so hands-on. “I like that the first day we just jumped right in, without any orientation. Other clubs the first three weeks you just talk and you don’t get anything done. Here, we just started on the first day,” Bowell said. Even though he’s a ninth-grader, he said his goal his first year is to go to state. Secondly, he’d like to build a robot that doesn’t fall apart in competition. “My job is to keep the robot together,” he said.
