LOCAL ROBOTICS TEAMS ROCK THE PROVINCIAL CHAMPIONSHIPS
Despite some challenging obstacles that conspired to prevent our intrepid group of roboteers from competing in this season’s Provincial Championships, namely a team bus breakdown combined with heavy snowfall, they all managed to make it to the tournament hosted on Saturday, March 2nd at Brentwood Collegiate School (BCS) in Mill Bay. A huge amount of gratitude goes to our tight-knit community of volunteers, parents, bus driver and coach who at a moment’s notice in the early morning hours drove their personal vehicles through challenging winter road conditions to deliver our numerous team members, robots and gear safely and miraculously on time to the tournament and literally saved the day and entire season.
Our Robotics71 teams competed against 30 teams from across the Island Region, including Brentwood, Shawnigan Lake, Salt Spring Island and Claremont – Victoria for the chance to compete at this season’s VEX World Championships to be held in Dallas Texas the week of April 25th. It was a long, hectic, action-packed day with some intense competition between the many talented teams who participated in the event. If you have never attended one of these robotic events, you owe it to yourself to witness one of these enthralling, multi-disciplinary competitions first-hand. As they are extremely entertaining, and our teams can always use a little extra encouragement from the audience.
The Comox Valley teams wrapped up the qualification rounds holding an incredible 7 of the top 10 positions, including 1st and 2nd place in the rankings. They then continued to battle their way through the quarter and semi finals. In the final rounds 4 Comox teams, with 2 partnered teams per alliance, duked it out for the tournament championship in a tightly matched duel. In the end, teams 7842X and 7842P edged out teams 7842Z and 7842F with a narrow 2-1 victory, securing Teams X – “The Unknown Variable” and P – “Noodles” positions at the 2024 World Championships for their second year in a row. Teams Z – “Zephyr” and F – “Fractal” brought home the 2 Tournament Finalists trophies, having both won 2nd place. Team-F also won the Design Award for their spectacularly effective and efficient design process, therefore winning them a position at the World’s as well. Thus, our teams secured 3 out of 4 available spots to compete at the 2024 World Championships, joined by Shawnigan’s team 6264X, who won the Excellence Award.
Vancouver Island Region, Provincial Champions: (Qualify for World’s) 7842X (Left): Morgan Pinel, Nicholas Horel, Thea MacDonald 7842P (Right): Elliott Patterson, Kaden Teha, Zander Hole