By Rowan Chetty, Co-T/E Life Editor
Students cheered as their robots navigated competition fields, picking up rings as part of the Conestoga Qualifying Robotics Tournament. On Jan. 25, Conestoga hosted its first-ever robotics competition that hosted both high school and middle school divisions. Forty-four high schools and 36 middle school teams attended. Competitions took place in the large and small gyms.
Seeing the high membership of Conestoga Robotics, junior Milan Shah had the idea for Conestoga to host its own competition. Shah began planning for the event in October, working alongside other Conestoga students to organize the event’s logistics.
“We’ve wanted to do a competition for a while. One of the biggest reasons is because Conestoga hasn’t hosted a competition, and with our large teams, it’s hard for other schools to host us because they look at Conestoga and they see us coming in with large teams taking up all of the space, and we’re not giving anything back,” Shah said.
To prepare for the event, Conestoga Robotics partnered with Vexmen, a division of Brandywine Robotics, which helped supply materials for the tournament, including competition fields and scoring equipment. Additionally, Shah worked with Robotics Club adviser Noah Austin and school administration to plan the setup of the event at Conestoga.
“One of the major issues when we were planning this event was finding all the outlets in the cafeteria and gym because we need power for the fields and for the teams,” Shah said. The day before the event, members and parents helped set up for the competition, assembling equipment for the competition area and tables in the cafeteria for teams to collaborate in between their events. Parents and National Honor Society members volunteered as scorekeepers.
“It feels surreal. I walked into the cafeteria, and there’s so many people. Then I walked into the gym, and it’s unrecognizable,” junior Venu Dhanabal, a member of team 6121A, said. “I’ve been to many competitions before, but here at ’Stoga, it feels different because I’ve been here and I’ve never seen it like this before.”
The competition offered awards based on the team’s match performance and judge interview. Based on the awards earned at the Conestoga tournament, teams could qualify for the HS Eastern PA State Championship at Norristown. Alongside helping plan the event logistics, junior Will Scheidt designed and created the awards for the event.
“Those (awards) were designed custom in the Fab Lab using acrylic name plates that were garnet or white, and they were engraved (using a) laser cutter and then mounted to the base,” Scheidt said.
Having worked with robotics for over seven years, Shah hopes that Conestoga’s robotics competition will become an annual event.
“One of my favorite parts about being on such a large team is that when you delegate work correctly, everything feels really smooth,” Shah said. “There’s not too much work placed on any one person, and when everyone knows what’s happening, it’s a lot of fun to work together as a team.”
Rowan Chetty can be reached at [email protected].
