BEST day ever

Robotics teams from the northeastern Colorado area gathered in Sterling on Nov. 5 to compete in the Golden Plains Boosting, Engineering, Science and Technology Robotics Challenge held at Northeastern Junior College. Among them was the Holyoke Junior and Senior High team, who went home with the Most Robust Robot award.

Each year, the first BEST competitions of the season are at the hub level. The event in Sterling is just one of many such contests across the country. The top finishers from each hub qualify to compete at regionals.

The seven teams in attendance last Saturday spent the morning participating in the seeding phase. In the afternoon, they began semifinal rounds, followed by finals for the top four teams. Holyoke was seeded fourth going into the semifinals, which spans three rounds. After the first two, Holyoke moved up to a promising second place, but the lead slipped away in the third round, and the team finished fifth overall.

Sidney, Nebraska, won the challenge, followed by the Peetz boys team in second, Julesburg third and Yuma fourth. First and second place earn a berth to regionals in Denver in December.

From year to year, the layout of the course, the objectives the robot must accomplish and the point values change. Therefore, teams must figure out which tasks they want to prioritize and design, and build a robot that fits their unique demands. And to make matters even more difficult, students have less than two months to make it happen.

This year was unlike any the Holyoke team had seen before. The course itself featured a built-in field robot, which was meant to reflect an order-fulfillment robot. Each team drove its own robot, which could, in turn, make deliveries to the field robot and manipulate it by pulling different levers. Each task garnered a set number of points.

Teams have three minutes on the course to score as many points as possible in a round. The teams’ drivers and spotters rotate throughout the day, so there were countless different strategies on display throughout the competition.

Students making up Holyoke’s team this year were seniors Alma Alejandre, Jimena Nuñez, Tanner Hardesty and Simon Krueger; sophomores Ben Kleve, Carlos Moreno and Grace Whisenhunt; freshmen Vianey Jimenez and Vanessa Zapata; eighth grader Tomas Estrada and Flor Alejandre; and seventh grader Justice Montgomery. They were coached by math teacher Jimmy French.