PHOTOS BY JENNIFER COLTON
A robotic “Block Party” took Armand Larive Middle School by storm on Saturday as the Hermiston High School robotics team hosted its first home robotics competition: a FIRST Tech Challenge Qualifying Tournament.
The match qualified teams for the state level of the FIRST Tech Challenge, one of the international robotics events of the nonprofit organization For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
Twenty teams of high school and middle school students traveled from as far as Dufur and The Dalles to Hermiston for the match. Each team brought a robot designed and built to score points in “Block Party,” the 2013-14 challenge. Robots scored by moving yellow blocks into containers balanced on a ramp or by hanging from a bar in the center of the arena.
“The event went really well, a top notch tournament,” Hermiston Robotics adviser Curt Berger said Saturday. “We have a great group of volunteers, parents and students that really helped put this event over the top. Armand Larive Middle School is just a tremendous facility to hold this event.”
At the end of the day, Berger said only three teams qualified for the state competition: the Pine Eagle Charter School Spartans, Team ‘Hex Tech’ from Hood River High School and the Hallway Engineers from The Dalles Middle School – Wasco County 4H.
For some teams, the competition didn’t go as well as they hoped.
“It’s been a rough time. We’ve gone through a lot of checking and a lot of errors,” said Carlos Flores, a freshman competing with Stanfield’s “Tiger Robotics” team. Flores and his teammates took screwdrivers and other tools to their robot in between matches, trying to solve some of the issues they discovered during the competition.
“It’s been really fun. We worked really hard to get here, and it’s fun to see the results of that work,” he said.
Nearby, team “YMCA” from Clara Brownell Middle School in Umatilla, also made last-minute adjustments. The team said they were still learning from the event and hoped to do better next time.
“We could have done a few things differently, but it’s a fun experience,” said seventh grader Andrew Wilson.
YMCA received the “Motivate” award during the competition, and another Umatilla team, Ace Robotics, made it into the finals.
While most students focused on their performance in the competition, Hermiston High School students had a different job: running the event. Instead of competing on their home turf, the Hermiston robotics students organized, emceed and directed the competition.
“It’s very busy, very fast paced,” HHS sophomore Amanda Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez and other volunteers helped direct teams – and robots – where they needed to be throughout the competition. For example, if one team had issues taking a robot to the arena, they would communicate that to the other organizers in an attempt to keep everything running smoothly and on time.
“You wouldn’t believe how crazy this gets,” Gutierrez said, pointing to the headset. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s more fun than I thought it would be.”
