The Berlin Robotics team and their bot “Birthday Boy” had advanced to the VEX Robotics World Championship for the first time, and won the Sportsmanship award. The competition was held in the America’s Center Convention Complex in Saint Louis, Missouri, between April 21 and April 24.
“We didn’t make it to the eliminations, but we won seven matches, lost five. With the second hardest rank of matches lined up in our division. We won the Sportsmanship award,” junior Mitchell Shubat said.
Making it to the World Championship was a big deal, not only because of how far the team got, but because it was the time that the Robotics club made it to that level.
“It’s a pretty big accomplishment because our robotics team has never made it to worlds, and it shows how hard work pays off,” senior Daniel Dunbar said.
Birthday Boy placed within the top six during the state competition, high enough to move up to world.
“At state, we qualified for world through skills. Essentially, you have a minute to drive your bot as much as possible, you also have a minute to code it to do as much as possible, and you add those two scores together. We finished sixth, which was good enough to move on,” senior James Paskey said.
The team prepared by overhauling the robot and code to improve it for the championship.
“A lot of last-minute fine-tuning, and we used all of our previous experience from past competitions to make this the best robot,” Dunbar said.
The club hopes to set future members up to problem-solve and be as successful as the club is now.
“I’m the notebook writer, which means I document anything we do in the club, so hopefully if we have people after us, they can look back and try to solve problems with it,” Shubat said.
