Programs
Robotics Victory
Shawnigan’s robotics program earned its first tournament win of the season last weekend, and the victorious team is hoping to build on that success in a bid to reach the VEX Robotics World Championship.
The team of Kathryn Y., Esme L., JD P. and Zekai L. brought home the top prize from the tournament at Claremont Secondary School in Victoria, the third of five tournaments this year, and Shawnigan’s first win since the 2022-23 season opener at Shawnigan in November 2022.
After the first two tournaments of the year, the Shawnigan team was more familiar with this year’s game, VEX Robotics Over Under, and was better able to prepare for the competition this time.
“You need to be good to be lucky and lucky to be good,” an old saying goes, and JD acknowledged that luck played a role in his team’s win. They had a good partner for the finals, he explained — a team from the Comox Valley that went to the world championship in Dallas, Texas last year.
“They played really well,” JD said. “We learned a lot from that team, talking to them in between games.”
Networking, the students pointed out, is a big part of robotics — learning from the other teams and helping them out leads to a higher level of performance for everyone.
“Everyone wants to win,” JD said. “And everyone wants to have better competition.”
In addition to the competitive aspect of tournaments, robotics teams are also judged on a variety of criteria, including presentations to judges, data collected, and performance. A Shawnigan team (which included JD’s brother, Ben) qualified for Worlds last year based on the judging component, but this year’s team is still figuring things out in that aspect.
“It’s a work in progress,” Kathryn said.
Until now, the judging aspect hasn’t been a priority, JD admitted.
“We care more about winning the games themselves,” he said.
Having already qualified for regionals, the foursome can now concentrate their efforts on fine-tuning their robot to compete for one of four berths at Worlds that will be up for grabs. Now that they’ve won a tournament, attending Worlds in Dallas in late May seems more realistic.
“At the start of the year, it more of a wish to think about,” JD said. “Now, it’s ‘Let’s go to worlds.’”
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Shawnigan Lake School is an independent co-educational boarding school for ages 13 –18 on Canada’s beautiful West Coast. Our diverse, interdisciplinary and innovative programming helps shape the next generation of global leaders.
