Many different Oregon high schools came to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition hoping to win some matches and try to get a spot in the national competition.

This year, there was 27 members of the Go4Bots robotics team going to the tournament.

“It’s a huge event, and it’s always a blast,” junior co-captain Sarah Walker said.

Co-captains Walker and senior Abner Vasquez looked to lead their team to a fun tournament.

“We have a lot of technical parts ready and working well, but we also are really enthusiastic and happy to be going,” Walker, who just recently won a spot at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for her science fair project that involved robotics, said.

The members put time and effort into making their robot a competitive one, according to coach and science teacher Stephen Scannell said.

“We went to the big kick off event that was Jan. 7, where they announced the rules for the new game. So we went as a team and spent about a week planning our robot, figuring out what kind of design challenges we were going to take on,” Scannell said. “And so, in consultation with the mentors and the students, we developed a plan then we worked hard on putting it together.”

The task of the game changes every year.  This year, the robots tried to shoot discs in a variety of goals.   For each disc made, the team received points and had to get as many points as they possible in two minutes and fifteen seconds.

The Gresham team designed their robot in six weeks, and they had to make sure it would work.  It took them many timed tests to see how well it could shoot frisbees and if it would be able to climb. For extra points the robots had to climb a pyramid and to win, the robot had to have gotten more points than the opponents.

“It’s not as important to us to win it though. We’re all happy just to be going, and it’s fun no matter how the rankings turn out,” Walker said. “It would be amazing to get into the finals, but we will still have a great time just playing qualification matches.”

In the beginning the Gresham robot had some difficulties with reloading quickly.   After they fixed the problem, the team managed to win some rounds and ended with an overall win-loss-tie score of 4-4-1.

“In the beginning of competition something was preventing us from moving sideways and made reloading very difficult and cost us time, but we managed to fix that later,” senior David James-Luna said.

The competition was held at the Portland Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Mar. 7-9 and after nine rounds over the three days the team ended in 30th place out of 59 total teams.

“I think the outcome of the tournament was good.  We had lots of fun competing,” Vasquez said.

Even though they had a few things to fix like at the beginning–like keeping the robot from moving sideways, which makes reloading difficult and costs time–the team knew they had a quality robot.

“We had a robot that was competitive, and it was a competitive machine. We had some minor failures in the competition, which is just part of it, but we were able to fix those,” Scannell said.

Though they also go to two other competitions throughout the year, this competition is what the team gets everything ready for, according to James-Luna. This tournament is the biggest tournament they can go to in Oregon, and the top winners get to go to the FRC championships, which makes this tournament an important one.

“We only go to the other two smaller competitions to prepare for the main competition and to train our younger members,” James-Luna said.  “Essentially, it all adds up to this competition, and then it’s just waiting until next year when we can do it all over again.”

Some of the team members will not be coming back next year to do it again, so they wanted to do good at this tournament and with this robot: not only because it would be their last chance to compete during high school, but also because it would be their last chance to work with their teammates.

With one of the co-captains and many other key people graduating, the team had to make sure that they trained their younger members well.

“A lot of our most active and experienced members are graduating this year, myself included, so teaching the younger members the tools of the trade was key before main competition.  But there are a few strong members that will be there, like our main programmer for example,” James-Luna said. “And I’ve watched the very new members grow and develop their skills, so I think they’ll be able to carry the torch quite well after we leave. I just hope we gave enough for them to be successful.”

The team did well like they had planned, and they all have reason to be proud of each other and themselves.

“ I was really proud of our robot, and I was proud of how our team came together with the mentors to do such a great job of supporting the students,” Scannell said. “We had some parents who did a great job of providing food and carpooling and some other support. And the students just did a great job working together.”

Although this season is over for the Go4Bots, they had fun and will be competing again next year.