For the fourth year in a row, the Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School RoboKnights will be heading to the VEX Robotics State Competition. Two high school teams, “Happy Little Accidents” and “Insert Team Name Here,” and two middle school teams, “Last Resort” and “The Sevies,” will compete at the state level at the end of February.
Happy Little Accidents team member Arthur Murray is extremely excited about the upcoming competition.
“We’re hoping to make it to Worlds again,” said Murray, whose 2018-2019 team qualified for the VEX Robotics World Competition in 2019. “We’ve been working on our Tower Takeover build since the challenge was announced at Worlds last year.” In this season alone, Happy Little Accidents has been crowned Tournament Champion 5 times and has won two Robot Skills awards and one Excellence award.
The VEX Robotics challenge this year is called “Tower Takeover,” and like in previous challenges, two alliances of two robots face each other on the playing field. The teams are tasked with using their robots to stack cubes of various colors in goal zones at the corners of the playing field. Robots can also place cubes into cups that are elevated above the playing field and increase the number of points scored by the stacks of cubes. Like in previous challenges, robots can score additional points by demonstrating autonomous programs in the first 15 seconds of each round. The remaining minute and 45 seconds are driver-controlled and allow the teams to demonstrate not only their designs but also their skills at operating their robots.
Happy Little Accidents is comprised of Murray, junior and VEX Worlds alumni Aidan Cochran, and 8th grader Hunter Dailey. Insert Team Name Here includes sophomores Chris Lathram (a VEX Worlds alumni), Andres Lemuz, and Jake Talbot. Last Resort is comprised of 7thgraders Zack Azar, David Huston, Merritt Payne, Will Sasser, and Jackson Wright. The Sevies includes 7th graders Ben Chitlik, Antonio Lemuz, Jaden Sigler, and Harrison Vaughn.
