Barstow’s FIRST robotics team attended the Cow Town ThrowDown event on November 5 and 6. This was the first in-person competition for the team since the outbreak of COVID-19. Barstow competed against 36 other teams from the midwest and won first place with the robot King Arthur.
Senior Divya Dendi (‘22), the team’s mechanical director, says, “I wouldn’t say that we were expecting to win because that almost never happens at Cowtown Throwdown because we are competing with some of the best teams in the world. But going in, we knew we had a solid robot that was built by us and our alumni, but we weren’t really expecting the results that we got.”
The Cow Town ThrowDown is an off-season robotics event that is open to all high school robotics teams. Teams play the game from the previous season and use the robot from the previous season as well. This year, the game was Infinite Recharge. The objective of Infinite Recharge is to control a robot and perform specific tasks like shooting balls and climbing ramps.
The team faced setbacks early on when their climber mechanism completely broke after the first match. Luckily, Gavin Wood, the head robotics coach, was able to find an adult from another team who was able to weld another part.
Dendi ‘22 comments that “this was a great example of gracious professionalism, which is what FIRST Robotics is all about. He kind of just reached out and helped us, even though it didn’t benefit him in any way.”
These relationships outside of the competition are equally as important as those during. This is because after the qualifier rounds of the competition, teams choose alliance partners who they play with for the rest of the competition.
After losing only one match in the qualifiers, Barstow was in second and partnered with the Swartdogs from Iowa. Despite losing their first match of the playoffs, the Kuhnigits and the Swartdogs went on to win the rest of the event with a 7-1 record.
Being the first event of the season and the first in-person competition in years for many, this was a great experience for the team.
Junior Brett Gieras (‘23), the spirit and marketing captain, stated that she was “pretty happy [with the result]. We couldn’t have done it without the help of past seniors.”
Mr. Wood added to this, saying that the robot they used, King Arthur, was “by far the most complex robot we’ve ever built. Historically we try to build stuff that’s a little more simple and effective, and we’ll probably try to go back to that… We have to rebuild a little this year, but everybody’s in the same boat.”
While rebuilding may sound daunting, many are excited by it. Dendi states that she is “really looking forward to making our own creation… This year we can redesign it [the robot] and take more responsibility for it.”
Everyone is eager to see what the robotics team will create and will be cheering them on this season.
