ELK GROVE, CA (MPG) - Many schools from across California and the U.S. participated in the regional FIRST Robotics Competition at Pleasant Grove High School March 15-17.
Thirty-four teams from different high schools competed in the event, which includes several skills-based games featuring robots programmed by High School . The students have until the end of February to the beginning of March to build the robot to prepare of the Sacramento regional competition.
The competition itself pits three robots each on opposite sides of the field. The rounds occur in two and a half minutes, and feature multiple skills-based games.
Each of the teams had their designated number. Pleasant Grove’s team number was 2073 and their team’s name was “EagleForce Robotics.”
Pleasant Grove Head coach Matt Beaudin said that every team gets a two-minute-long video in early January to get the game’s specs and that it’s also up to the students to brainstorm ideas to build and program a robot within eight weeks.
“We have some kids putting in 300 hours between the first weekend of January and the last weekend of April, which is typically the season,” Beaudin said.
Conner Provins, a Pleasant Grove High School junior and mechanical lead for EagleForce, said that the team was founded in 2007 with eight members and throughout the years, the team has grown to 45 members. He noted that their team has their sub-towns, such as mechanical, outreach, scouters, strategy and business.
Provins said that he had been a part of EagleForce since his freshman year and plans to be a part of it his freshman year in college as a FIRST Robotics Competition mentor.
Velma Lomax, regional director for FIRST Robotics, said each robot is randomly generated depending on which alliance they are a part of. The teams are comprised of multiple robots based off of each’s strengths and weaknesses.
“With each robot being randomly generated, there has to be three on the blue alliance and three on the red alliance,” Lomax said. “Never will you play with all three robots the same. You might play with one, two might play again but never all three.”
PGHS’s cafeteria and small gym had the pits for the teams to work and prepare their robots. The big gym was where the field was for the competition. Lomax added that with Saturday being a practice day, many of the kids involved had not gotten their robot on the field for the competition.
“Most of these kids never had the robot on the field, some of them already competed in week 1 and week 2,” Lomax said. “But they’ve never been on the field, so this was their time to calibrate their robot to get everything working. So that’s why we give them a practice day.”
Among the 34 teams in the competition, many came from various parts of California, such as Southern California, Northern California and Central California. However, one team came from outside of the state. Team SCREAM represented Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia, Mo.
Michael Wright, head coach of Team SCREAM, said that his team likes to do a destination trip every other year and likes to meet new teams from different programs.
“When we won the world championships last year, we were pre-qualified, and we looked at the calendar of events and I thought ‘why not come to California and compete with the best robots in the world?’” Wright said. “There’s a high number of quality teams out here.”
Smith-Cotton High senior and Team SCREAM captain Morgan Withers said she and her team achieved success back home and “punched their ticket to the worlds championship.” She said that her team was excited to compete with the other teams.
“It’s always exciting to compete with other teams we don’t get see often,” Withers said. “California is a new place for us. In my sophomore year, we went to New Orleans, and we always make new friends and lifelong connections at these events.”
The competition wrapped up on Monday, March 17 after press time.