Team 1939 kicks off preseason with a tournament and their biggest event of the season!

Robotics is in the midst of finishing the last of last year’s robot’s tournaments and preparing for one of their biggest events of the year, Go Baby Go! 

Cow Town ThrowDown, the team’s first tournament of the year, is an off-season scrimmage using last year’s robots and game. No awards are given, and the tournament finishes in only two days. 

Preparation for tournaments like Cow Town is different compared to in-season tournaments because the robot is reused from the previous year. Because the team doesn’t meet as much now as during the regular season, “we just try to make little fixes on our robot that we know will make it better, which means packing everything and trying to remember every tool and material we could possibly need at the competition,” explains Loch Beagle ‘25, the president of the robotics team this year. 

This year’s game had a musical theme. Usually, there are climbing, launching, and pick-and-place elements on the field each year. “This year, we had to climb a chain and pick our robot off the ground, as well as pick up a ring off the ground and launch it into a high or low goal,” explains Coach Aaron Dalton, the Robotics Head Coach. “There also was an alliance element to this year’s competition, which means that we had to collaborate with two other teams at the tournament and compete together to win the most points.” 

After load in, the time where teams arrive and bring their robots and their equipment to their pits inside the competition area, practice matches start. Cow Town only has a couple hours of practice matches for teams to work out kinks in their robots before the actual competition begins, but it starts after all the teams have had their scheduled preparation time. 

If you ever make it out to a tournament, which you should, Team 1939 will be easy to spot in the stands and in the pit with their iconic rabbit hats. 

In order to make sure every aspect of the competition is accounted for, members of the robotics team are divided into five groups based on their interests. These groups have their own jobs before and on tournament day; the mechanical team builds the robot itself, the electrical team programs the robot and all its functions, the scouting team is in charge of collecting data on other teams at tournaments in order to create alliances, and the business team is in charge of social media, graphic design for logos, writing award essays, and fulfilling the responsibilities on the team that aren’t necessarily interested in working on the actual robot. 

Each group has their own student leader who helps to organize their team and make sure everyone is staying on task. This allows the robotics team to be a student-led activity, and the jobs of the coaches, Mr. Dalton, Ms. Lea, and Ms. Pusey, are to make sure that morale and stress levels are manageable, and to provide guidance whenever necessary. Most importantly, they also help to make sure that student ideas come into fruition, even if the student isn’t quite sure how to execute it. 

On tournament days, a few additional roles are available. The Drive Team is a group of five team members, usually who are more experienced, who are responsible for driving and controlling the robot during the competition. Two people are entrusted with those responsibilities, one is a human player that gets to interact with the game on the field during the competition, and another member of the drive team is responsible for transporting the robot to and from the field. 

Coach Dalton, of course, is down there with them to give strategy advice. 

Beagle is on the mechanical team, but they also fulfilled tech and human player roles at the Cow Town tournament when they weren’t fixing it in the pit. 

Unfortunately, the mechanical team ended up having a lot of work to do at Cow Town. “ Our entire shooter arm tore through the metal holding it up, and it wasn’t stable, but we decided to compete anyway,” explains Beagle. 

The drive train and elevator on the robot had a few hiccups as well, and despite being able to fix all of this in the final round, a disconnected battery in the middle of the field was the final nail in the coffin. For that reason, the team wasn’t able to make it past the qualifying rounds. 

However, the team went into the Cow Town tournament with the prospect of having fun rather than being competitive. 

“Cow Town is a fun event. It’s not during the regular competition season, so it was a time of learning and seeing how returning and new members of the team could handle the competition environment,” explains Coach Dalton. 

“I am proud of our team and how we did, even though our robot did not do super well,” says Beagle. Their teamwork came through when they needed it after the complications, and was able to learn from the experience in order to try and get a chance to make it to later rounds. 

With their partnership with Variety K.C., Team 1939 is gearing up for Go Baby Go!, an event that the team has participated in for about a decade. In order to give children with mobility issues a chance to move around on their own, Barstow Robotics customizes battery operated toy cars in order to accommodate each individual child and their needs. 

They invite other local robotics teams to participate, too, in order to teach them how to run events like Go Baby Go! and to build more cars. It’s one of the ways the team is really happy they are able to positively impact the KC community. 

This year, Team 1939 is helping nine children that applied to the program. Eight other robotics teams will be joining them. Each team will be led by one of Barstow’s robotics members in order to make sure that each child gets to have a custom car by the end of the day. 

Barstow’s Robotics team has a heavy social media presence, too. Emily Smith ‘27 is the team’s social media manager, and you can find her work @frcteam1939 on Instagram to keep up with everything they accomplish! 

Make sure to try and head out to a tournament when you can. The next closest one to Barstow is their Week 2 tournament in Sedalia, MO. The team would really appreciate the support! 

As always, if you’re interested in joining robotics, feel free to contact Coach Dalton or talk to one of your peers on the team.