While other students were taking a Spring break from their class work, the members of the Westerville Wild Warbots robotics team continued to exercise their minds as they competed at two FIRST Robotics Challenge regional competitions, posting some of the most successful finishes in the team’s history.
For this year’s FRC competition, the team designed, built, and programmed a robot that could navigate a playing field autonomously as well as via a joystick controller. The robot had to be able to pick up and pass large inflatable balls, launch them over a six-foot high truss, and accurately shoot them into goals.
The team’s first event was the Buckeye Regional Tournament on March 20-22, where 57 teams competed at the Cleveland State University Wolstein Center. After a dozen qualifying rounds, the team was ranked in 25th place. For the event’s final single-elimination tournament, the Wild Warbots were drafted to be part of an alliance. That alliance then reached the final round before finishing in second place.
The next weekend, the team was part of the Queen City Regional in Cincinnati at the Xavier University Cintas Center. This time, after the qualifying rounds, the team was ranked 11th out of 48 teams. This finish allowed resulted in the Wild Warbots being named an alliance captain and had the chance to draft other teams to its alliance. In this event, their alliance lost in the quarter-finals of the tournament.
“We could not be more proud and excited about how our team’s and robot’s performance at these competitions,” said team mentor Leslie Baumann, also an English teacher at Westerville North High School. “We were competing against some of the top teams in the country, including those that had the support of major universities and companies. We showed that our Westerville students could hold their own against some real powerhouses.”
Even though these events were held in Ohio, they attracted several teams from outside the state including ones from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kentucky as well as California, Arkansas, Canada, and even one team from China.
The Westerville Wild Warbots are in their fourth year of existence. The team is made up of students from Westerville North, South, and Central high schools.
The acronym FIRST refers to “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The organization’s mission is “to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.”
More information about the team and FIRST is available through the team’s website at www.wildwarbots.org.