After nearly five months of developing a game-strategy, designing, building and programming their robots to compete, the four Vex Robotics competition teams from Freeport High School competed in the Southern New York State Vex Robotics Championship at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on March 12.
As the only public high school in the southern New York State region to send four teams to the state championship, the students on the four teams - 1808A, 1808B, 1808C and 1808D - competed in tournaments through the school year to earn their invitations to compete on the state level.
"Being a member of the Robotics teams at Freeport High School requires a large dedication of time and students learn to work as a team, communicate about their current and future plans with the robot, and strategize how they can win each round of the competition," said club advisor Kevin Harrison. ""I am very proud of our club and each of the four teams for making it to this level."
During the competition, the four teams tried to score points with their robots by moving various objects or blocking their opponents preventing them from moving forward before a two-minute timer went off. After each round, the teams were able to make design iterations and coding changes and improvements to make their robots faster, stronger and smarter in order to advance through the competition's different levels.
Team 1808A and its team members senior and robotics club president, Nicholas Quintanilla and sophomore Korey Hillocks used different sized gears to increase torque and utilized a hanging claw to pick up the purple rings in the game. While team 1808B, a six member team comprised of juniors Yuleydy Cortorreal, club secretary Jayden Easy, Vanessa Marroquin, Austin Patience, Ryan Retzlaff and Kim Rosa made many autonomous coding changes and scored the most points of all of Freeport's teams.
Freshmen David de la Llera, Stanton Deans, Dominic Igneri and club treasurer and sophomore Evelin Lopez from team 1808C reengineered their robot multiple times. By putting all their allotted motors onto the robot at once, it allowed them to boost its power and push around larger robots in the tournament because of their higher strength and lower center of gravity.
The two team members on 1808D senior Jaime Abreu and sophomore Anthony Valone worked the fastest and most efficiently of any of the group in the competition, completing their robot first.
Despite finishing in the middle of the rankings, the four robotics teams gave it their all and enjoyed the experience.