The four members of the Longmont High “Pronounce This” robotics team won the top award at the recent high school VEX World championship, giving them the distinction of the best all-around team out of more than 800 competitors.
The team — senior Luke Hernandez and juniors Alex Dickhans, Abi Reichert and Carl Richter — has been competing together for three years, though the students all have participated in competitive robotics starting in either elementary or middle school.
“This is the highest award in the world at the biggest event,” said Hernandez, the team driver who also helps build the bot. “To be one of the teams to win this award is crazy.”
The “Excellence” award is given to the team that scores well in every category, from robot skills to design to research. Teams also are judged on an engineering notebook and interviews with judges about their robot and process.
“We’re really excited about this group,” said Alexandra Downing, St. Vrain’s competitive robotics program manager. “They worked so hard, and they deserve it. They have built such a strong community for the younger kids because of how they mentor.”
Reichert, the team’s project manager and engineering notebooker, said mentoring younger students is her favorite part. She started competing in third grade.
“I’m really passionate about it,” she said. “I really like helping younger kids get into something I love so much.”
Altogether, 19 St. Vrain Valley teams competed or are competing in the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas, which started last week and is continuing this week.
Last week’s competition was for the high school VEX VRC program, with students competing with robots built mainly with metal parts. The middle school version of that competition wraps up Tuesday. St. Vrain sent seven middle school and six high school teams to the VRC competition.
Later this week, VEX IQ program teams will compete. In VEX IQ, elementary and middle school students build robots with mainly plastic parts. St. Vrain is sending four elementary and two middle school teams to the IQ competition.
St. Vrain Valley fields around 264 VEX robotics teams and hosts more than 20 tournaments during the competition season, including the state IQ tournament.
For the VEX competition, two teams partner against another two teams, with the goal of earning as many points as possible by completing challenges with a robot on a field. This year’s challenge resembles a soccer field and requires both scoring on a goal and defending it. The two partner teams work together to develop strategies based on their respective robot’s strengths.
The “Pronounce This” team took its fifth version of its robot to this year’s worlds competition, rebuilding it to incorporate improvements throughout the season. Team members said they built a simple, but durable offensive robot.
“When it’s simple, there are less points for failure,” said Richter, a team designer and builder. “Our robot is pretty reliable. That makes us more competitive at the higher level matches.”
Added Hernandez, “We had to make sure we were as light and quick as possible.”
Along with a bringing solid robot and working well with their partner teams, the students said, they aced the interviews with the judges. Building the robot entirely by themselves, without adult help, gave them a depth of understanding in answering questions that some of the other teams lacked, they said.
Dickhans, the team’s programmer, said the robotics competitions are unique because of the camaraderie among the teams and willingness to help, including loaning extra parts for repairs if a team’s robot stops working.
“We’re all competing against each other, but we’re all in together,” he said.
He added that hearing the team’s number announced for the top award while surrounded by more than 8,000 robotics students and spectators was “entirely unreal.”
“We put so much work into it,” he said. “It was totally exhilarating.”
