Weston, CT’s Path to VEX Robotics World Championships

Simply being invited to Regionals in any sport is an honor. The amount of work and effort you need to put in is exceptional. But in robotics, going to Regionals is a whole other thing. Robotics isn’t technically a sport, but you must put in all your effort or else you’re going nowhere. In fact, you need to put in the same amount of effort, teamwork, and cooperation as any team sport, if not more. Several months before the actual date of the tournament, my team had double qualified for Regionals through winning a tournament and winning the excellence award (and I was able to possess this award for one week, placing it on a bookshelf next to my desk, placed on an orange cube, a game element from a few years back) which was the highest ranking award you could win. I wasn’t completely nervous about Regionals yet because I was still in shock that my team had done so well. I thought that maybe we had a chance to do well this year, possibly even make it to Worlds. Oh boy, little did I know what we would accomplish this year.

The day I left for the tournament, I was pretty calm. During Quiet Study during school (which is basically a study hall), I grabbed a pass to go to my Robotics coach’s room to pack our box up with everything we could possibly need for Regionals. Because of Murphy’s Law that “everything that can go wrong will go wrong”, we packed everything that we would need and left out everything that we didn’t. By the end of the tournament, we only ended up using some of the things that we had brought (which is great!). My team and I worked together to bring everything up to my mom’s car, driven by my dad. I ate lunch in the car as we picked up my sister, and we were off to Framingham, Massachusetts. 

We finally arrived at the hotel after what felt like forever in the car, and we unpacked. The hotel literally looked like a castle on the outside, and it was really nice on the inside. We didn’t bring the robot into the hotel room yet because we were going to go to my coach’s hotel to practice in the lobby at night. After settling down a little, my mom said that we were going to Chinatown in Boston. As we rode in the car, the nerves started to kick in.

Sitting down in the Chinese restaurant where we were the only customers (we had an early dinner) didn’t make things much better. The room was empty except for tables with huge white tablecloths draped over them, and there was a big window looking outwards and across the bustling Boston streets. Between bites of sesame chicken and seafood tofu, I’d think about the tournament and pretty much nothing else. It was scary. We had somewhat of a reputation to keep us as a Claw Bot that could beat some of the best teams in Connecticut.

I focused on the food and the hilarious text messages my friends and teammates were sending. This worked, and the fears were chased away and replaced with funny messages and anecdotes of teammates fighting each other during the 2 ½ hour car ride. The support from the high schoolers was also a key factor in keeping my spirits up (it is a high school and middle school team). Despite everything however, I would still be scared for several moments of a time just thinking about the tournament the next day. You see, the most recent tournament hadn’t gone so well. There were disqualifications, bad losses, and other things that lowered my faith in our team. I thought, maybe those tournament championships we won were just luck. At least we did actually get a trophy from the last tournament, that being Robot Skills Champion 2nd Place. I didn’t even know that that trophy existed. But it helped me realize that we were actually really good at skills. So after the tournament, we started becoming laser focused on Skills. We knew that we didn’t have too much of a chance of winning the tournament, but there was a much higher chance of us making it to Worlds through our Skills score.

After Boston, we left for my coach’s hotel because the hotel let us set up a practice field in the lobby. I don’t know why they complied as we were just a little quieter than a monkey house. Anyway, I fixed up some code with the robot, and helped my friend out with his robot. Because of Murphy’s law, on the robot, the lift mechanism had decided to break, and the driver (and possibly the most annoying person on the team) had broken an entire shaft. How does one break a shaft? A METAL shaft? A STEEL METAL SHAFT?? His own team didn’t even know how it broke. Luckily, my friend’s dad was there to help them sort out the dilemma. But even so, it took a while for everything to be sorted out with them. And along the way, I was able to finish up my code as well as help another team with theirs. 

I awoke at 5 am on my own accord. It’s probably because it’s hard for me to sleep in general, but also because the hotel room was always really bright due to the fact that it doesn’t even have blackout curtains. In fact, my mom had woken up at 2 AM and thought that it was time to get up. Anyway, I got out of bed and readied myself for a long, long, day. My dad and I left the hotel at around 6:45, and we were off. 

I arrived at 7. As soon as I got there, we started rushing about frantically, getting the robot ready. Robot inspection started, and we just barely passed. Thankfully, the man running the inspection was a chill old guy who was happy to point out the issues with our robot. He was a tall man with bright white hair. He wore what appeared to be a white NASA jumpsuit adorned with colorful patches. I had seen him a few years ago at Regionals, and he looked pretty much exactly the same as back then. He carried with him a plastic bag full of rubber wristbands (I promptly lost mine and felt guilty about for the rest of the tournament). We fixed the problems that we needed fixed. For example, we continued to make adjustments to our autonomous, or autons. This is part of a match where nothing but pure code runs. We did this to make sure that it would be successful at least 90% of the time. In the end, the code worked around 70% of the time. Not perfect, but it was enough so that we would be able to rank pretty high. I’m the programmer on the team, and nobody else can really help me, so coding autons can take a very long time. I enjoy programming, and the thrill of your code actually doing what you want it to do is unrivaled.

Before long, the schedule for the qualification rounds dropped, and apparently I must’ve jinxed us the night before when I said that we were probably going to get queue 1 (the first match of the entire tournament!), and we ended up getting queue 1… because of course we did… in the pool of about 40 or so robots, we ended up in queue 1.

The way that matches work is that there are two alliances, red and blue. There are two teams per alliance, which makes a total of 4 teams per match. Which makes getting queue 1 a 1/10 chance. The odds aren’t terrible, but it’s still bad luck. The first match can always determine a winning/losing streak, and if everything starts badly, then… . Before matches began, we had the drivers’ meeting, which went over some important rules. Some of them I had seriously never heard of, which is concerning. But, nonetheless, I was able to pick up on these rules and they definitely helped us throughout the tournament. Not once did they turn against us. Yep, that totally happened. Definitely. I am totally not foreshadowing our demise. Nope.

Anyway, the tournament started off great. We won the first match (the other team got disqualified due to one of the rules that the head ref explained earlier) and we continued our winning streak, getting really lucky with the alliances we were being paired up with, which is great. We ended up getting paired with three of the best teams in the tournament a few times, and we won those matches in landslides. The only few times we lost matches was due to bad alliances. But we won most of our matches, and we ranked really high by the end of the qualifiers. In between matches, we also ran Skills. Robot Skills is when you drive your robot around a field alone and score as many points as possible (drivers skills) or run code so that your robot can score as many points as possible (programming skills). Our skills score ended up being super good, much better than anything we had accomplished before. In addition to our excellent driver skills, I had also managed to program an EXCELLENT programming skills, so by the end of the tournament, we had reached 6th place in skills. Which is really good, considering that we only had a clawbot compared to all the meta-bots (robots that fit the meta). 

Our last match ended after a long day of rushing around, talking to alliances, and scouting out potential ones – finally alliance selection began. You see, after all the qualification rounds take place, alliance selection for the elimination rounds happens. Starting from rank #1 from qualifications, up to 18 alliances are formed from the teams available. For example, rank #1 can pick anyone from the lineup, then #2, then #3. If one team picks another from the top 18 (which is a common occurrence), then they move further down the lineup, so that means that rank #19 can pick an alliance. The alliance we selected was a strong team (from Granby, CT) that was friendly with us and was willing to accept our request to become partners. In fact, after asking them, we heard them celebrating quietly, so that was a good sign. 

Right after alliance selection, we got ready for our first match. Because we ranked #3 in the qualifiers, we were seeded three in the elimination bracket, which meant that we would be facing off against a much lower seeded team, which meant that the chances of winning this match had to be super high. Right? RIGHT? Well, the match went well. Our score at the end was MUCH higher than the other side’s. But there was one small detail that ended our run. 

We were disqualified. More specifically, it was our alliance that was disqualified. It was for a rule that they had gone over during the drivers meeting, SG3. At that moment, my heart basically stopped.
The opposing alliance 12 feet away on the other side of the field appeared hopeful; did they have a chance? What was this immense stroke of luck? The spectators on the right side were highly interested. After all, something like this doesn’t happen every match. I looked at the singular object that caused this dilemma. That one red plastic object caused me so much strife I was beginning to question myself. Shaking, I looked at my coach on the side. I felt hot tears bubbling up behind my eyes.

I looked up at the ceiling: this was it, the end of the line. All of our hard work and efforts before were pretty much for nothing. This was a truly painful moment for me. But I needed to stay calm. For now, at least. After the ruling, I held my head high, and my team and I headed down to the pit area. My robotics coach gave my team a big hug and told us that we’d done well. I agreed. She then said that even though we were out of the running for some awards (such as finalists and champions), there were still other opportunities to go to Worlds. After what felt like a very long time, it was time for the finals and awards. One of our teams from Weston, CT, actually got an award called the Energy Award that did absolutely nothing, but it was cool to have. Our alliance partner who ended up giving us the DQ got the Design Award, which was indeed a World’s qualifying award, so that was cool. My coach was shooting daggers from her eyes at them, but I was really happy. The top teams were TOP TEAMS. A few specific teams multi-qualified for Worlds more times than I could count. And this gave us a chance to go to Worlds. You see, when a team double qualifies, they reach down into the skills rankings to bring more teams to Worlds. This way, one tournament doesn’t send too few teams. And because of all the qualifications, there was a super high chance of making it to Worlds. I left with my family soon after the tournament ended, and we arrived home after a long, long car ride. It had been a very long day, and I was completely out of it.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Because a few hours after the tournament ended, my coach received an email from VEX, saying that my team, team #17814F had qualified for Worlds! To be honest, I wasn’t really in shock by the news, but confirmation was very relieving. My mom kept telling me to expect the worst, but this time, we received some of the best news possible. Still, my team and I were ecstatic. We are going to Dallas Texas for the World Championships of VEX Robotics! This was something that nobody in my town has ever done. We have basically made HISTORY. For my entire robotics team, of course. WOW. In fact, our local news outlet is currently working with the mom of one of my teammates to create a story about our team. Which is also cool. Going to Dallas is going to be a lot. Worlds is a three day tournament with people from all over the… world. We don’t expect to do very well, but we’ll try our best and have fun while we’re there. This year’s Robotics Regionals was an incredible experience for me and my team, and I really did enjoy it. I’m glad we qualified for Worlds, and I’m glad I was able to make a big contribution towards it.