VEX Robotics 2018 National Championship
Alex Baxter, 12B, writes:
Whilst the Beast from the East was fighting Storm Emma, last weekend saw Stanborough’s own Shark Robotics do battle with the country’s top robotics teams at the two day VEX UK National 2018 Championships.
Following on from previous year’s successes, the newly formed team of Alex Wright (10A) and Charlie Earnshaw (10A) had managed to secure entry to the prestigious end of year finale by winning their previous regional qualifying event. The qualified teams were due to fight it out at the renowned Telford International Centre, However, the snowy conditions meant that only 34 out of the 60 scheduled participating teams actually managed to arrive.
After leaving Stanborough at 5.15am, the team, along with mentors Alex Baxter (12B) and Matt Schofield arrived in good spirits ready to perform in the day’s qualifying matches. It was the first time this team had competed at such a high level; regardless of their lack of experience the Shark’s fought bravely, managing to win four of their matches and were on the brink of qualifying for the knockout stages. Unfortunately, they were hampered by technical issues which meant they didn’t finish as high as they would have liked.
At the end of the day the team finally managed to get through the snow and find their hotel. After seeing the technical difficulties that they had during the day, the team worked through the night to successfully rebuild their robot and get it working again.
The final day saw the all important “alliance selection” process whereby the Sharks would find out if they had progressed to the final knockout stages of the competition. After some tense negotiations they were joined with two other teams and selected to play in the quarter finals.
After two tense games and some unfortunate malfunctions with the robots, the team was unfortunately knocked out in the quarter finals. However, huge congratulations to the team who have achieved a great deal in getting that far in their first year of competing.
A big thank you needs to go to Matt Schofield and Mr Benzid for all their help and support throughout the year. As well as this, we would also like to thank OCADO TECHNOLOGY for sponsoring the team during the season.