80 high school robotic teams from across the country and Canada descended on Cleveland with a chance to qualify for the VEX Word Championship.
CLEVELAND — The matches at the VEX Launch Cleveland event are fast paced. For the first 15 seconds, robots rely on preprogrammed moves. After that, drivers take over, sometimes changing strategies on the fly. This signature event at CASE Western Reserve University can secure you a spot in the VEX World Championship, if you perform well.
“This brings the elite teams, the top teams from all over the place. Here at launch, we’ve got 14 states, two countries. There are 80 teams that are competing,” explained the robotics coach for Brecksville-Broadview Heights schools, Craig Kowatch. Brecksville-Broadview Heights had 6 teams competing in the tournament. VEX Robotics is a competition for students to learn creativity, teamwork, leadership and problem solving. They design and build their own robots to perform in a different game each year. Akron’s STEM High School had 3 teams competing. After a few rounds, they remain confident.
“Today is like the best performance, but we had time to test it before any matches,” said Brenden Bailey, an Akron STEM High School team member. “Overall is just performing way better than our previous iteration.”
“We’ve been doing pretty good,” added teammate Nehemiah Hughes. Our partners in that match, they broke down earlier in the competition. So, they kind of had trouble scoring.”
“Every year they change the game, so you can’t use your robot from the year before,” said Kowatch. “There is rings, there’s mobile goals. You have to take those rings and put them on the mobile goals.”
Teams can push the opposing mobile goals into a negative zone. Making opponents lose points. Robots can climb or hang off a center tower. Teams are randomly partnered up, forming alliances during part of the tournament. This requires some quick thinking.
“That’s when you can work out strategies, what their robot can do, what your robot can do, and try and figure out the best way that you guys can win that match,” said Akron STEM High School’s Luke Day.
It’s long hours of practice and building to get here, so they go all out, but when the buzzer sounds friendship form.
“You see the matches, it’s brutal. They’re after each other,” said Kowatch. “But as soon as they walk away, they’re all high fiving each other, congratulating each other.”
The team from Akron STEM High School placed 24th in Launch Cleveland. A team from Broadview-Brecksville Heights was the tournament champion, securing a spot in the VEX Nationals in Dallas, Texas, in May.
