SHERBURNE — On January 13, the Sherburne-Earlville Robotics team competed with four teams at the West Genesee VEX Robotics Tournament which hosted thirty six teams from fifteen different schools.

“We compete in the VEX program, which is the most popular robotics competition in the world with about 20,000 teams worldwide,” said Wesley Macker, Science and Robotics teacher at Sherburne-Earlville School.

He said one team went to the world competition in Dallas twice and all three of the teams last year made it.

Macker added, “Currently, we have four teams: The Burninators; Absolute Aces; The Slightly Below Room Temperaturinators; and, Womp Womp.”

He said the robotics competition level is made up of high schoolers and middle schoolers grades 6 through 12.

“The team must build a robot that can complete a specific task, and this year, it's like playing soccer,” said Macker.

“Think RC cars with catapults, flywheels, and ways to manipulate objects,” he added. “Teams have to build robots to certain parameters then drive them head to head.”

The tournament had six awards available, three based on performance and three were evaluated by the judges. Two of the performance awards were given to the Tournament Champions for winning first place in the Finals Match Alliance, and the last was given to the Robot Skills Champion for highest combined top Programming and top Driving Skills Challenge score.

The judged awards are the Excellence Award to the top all around team, the Design Award goes to the team with the most effective and efficient robot design process, and the Judges Award is given to the team deserving recognition for special accomplishments. It is generally not possible to win multiple judged awards.

During the qualifying matches team-Burninators and team-The Slightly Below Room Temperaturinators, were the only undefeated teams, with The Burninators ranking 1st due to achieving the only autonomous win point of the tournament.

Team-Womp Womp went 4-1 and ranked 5th, and Team-Absolute Aces, were having a rough day and ranked 28th with a record of 1-4.

The school robotics tournament has three phases. The first are the qualifying rounds where teams are randomly paired up and play matches against opposing teams with their alliance changing for each match. This determines the rank of each team, which determines the order they participate in alliance selection.

In alliance selection, teams form a permanent alliance of two for the elimination bracket. The last phase is the elimination rounds, which is a traditional single elimination bracket to determine the tournament champions.

The elimination matches debuted with the 1st seed alliance of The Burninators facing off against the 16th seed alliance of the Absolute Aces, resulting in the most one sided match of the tournament with a score of 161-27 due to the Absolute Aces robot being stuck in the goal.

SE’s other freshmen teams, The Slightly Below Room Temperaturinators and Womp Womp both made it to the semifinals, losing to former Northern New York State Champion The Robo Hornets of Harpursville, and Co.R.E. of Sandy Creek.

Right as the match began the robot of Co.R.E. was tipped over, resulting in a two vs. one for the remainder of the match. The Burninators and The Titans were once again tournament champions, with a score of 114-68.

Macker said they are currently undefeated in Northern New York State events and went to a signature event last weekend, proving undefeated in all of their qualification matches but lost their first match of the season in eliminations.

“A signature event typically attracts world class teams and is indicative of the level of play we faced in Dallas,” Macker continued. The Burninators had the highest skills score in Northern New York and qualified for the world competition,’ he said,. “There are seven slots for teams from our region to move on.”

In addition to winning the tournament the Burninators were also the top scoring team in the skills challenge, which is a solo match where teams try to score as many points as possible in a short time period. They are currently ranked 1st in Northern New York with 123 points in driver control, 97 in autonomous, and a total of 220.

They also received the Excellence Award, which is the highest award judges can bestow at a tournament. Their alliance partner The Titans received the Judge’s Award. Both teams qualified for the Northern New York State Championship.

“We compete quite frequently and are going to compete at Liverpool on February 3, Chittenango on February 26, and in the Northern NYS tournament on March 9, at Queensbury. The public can view all events for free and some events are streamed online,” said Macker.

Macker explained it's not just science and technology, there is a large social aspect too. He said the team has a good mix of high achieving science students and students who are good mechanically. There is a huge mix of skills that are required to excel as a team, as teams are required to cooperate and to some degree, politic.

Macker said robotics is a phenomenal experience for any student with a degree of motivation, even those that do not want to pursue a technical or science career. He said it builds social skills, problem solving skills, connections, and provides some amazing educational options.

He said he also referee's at the events and has been the head referee at both Southern NYS and Northern NYS tournaments.

SE anticipates another strong season and is looking for sponsors. Last year SE sent three teams to the World Championship, and one team the year before that. If you are interested in sponsoring SE’s robotics program, please contact Mr. Ryan via ryanj@seonline.org or Mr. Macker via mackerw@seonline.org. For more information visit secsd.org/Robotics.aspx