THE DALLES — The Dalles High School VEX Robotics team is off to a quick start again this season. This year sees three teams returning for an exciting season of this years game “Push Back.” The season started with a tournament Nov 22nd at North Marion High School. Defending State Champion Syntax Error, a team made up of Seniors Kim Morales Cortes, Evelyn Schecter and Everest Lenardson, finished in the semi finals with only an unfortunate disqualification keeping them out of the finals. Disconauts, composed of Sophomores Edgar Castanedes and Coltin Wilson and Freshman Will McAllister made it all the way to the quarter finals. Syntax Error also won the Design award, the second highest Judges award, qualifying them for the Oregon State Championships at Mt Hood Community College to be held in March. Disconauts also went home with hardware winning the Sportsmanship Award.
This past weekend three teams — Syntax Error, Disconauts, and returning team Garlic Bread — traveled to North Salem for the Viking Holmgang tournament. Fifty-nine teams competed. Syntax Error got off to a quick start and finished qualifying matches a perfect 6-0. They then entered the platinum bracket as the second seed and ran the table, finishing 4-0 in elimination, which saw them the tournament champions along with a West Salem team. Syntax Error also competed strongly in the individual skills portion. In this portion, teams compete against a 90 second clock in driver-controlled tasks as well as in completely autonomous tasks. Syntax Error finished the tournament in 3rd with 60 points and missed second place by only 1 point. One more ball and they would have been alone in Second Place! What a day for these seniors, who have their eyes set on repeating as Oregon State Champions and finishing their robotics career at the VEX World Championships to be held in April in St Louis, Missouri.
Disconauts, having completed a full rebuild of their robot over the holiday break also hit the ground running. They finished their first four matches 4-0. Unfortunately, they stumbled some, losing their next two matches and finishing 4-2. They entered the elimination as the 5th team. Disconauts won their first match against the 12th seeded team and then knocked off the 4th seeded alliance. They then went on to lose a tough battle against the #1 seed in the semi-finals. Disconauts put together a series of great Skills runs finishing with 45 points which was good enough for 10th place in Skills.
Garlic Bread, with Seniors Arden Buchanan and Zach Kime started their final VEX Robotics season in style. With a newly finished robot to be broken in they started their day 2-0. Their 3rd match saw them lose by a heart breaking three points — which in Push Back is one scored ball. This only motivated them more and they then went on to win their next three matches, leaving them 5-1 and in 7th place going into the platinum bracket. Alliance selection left them as the 6th seed. Garlic Bread then made short work of the lower-seeded team in their round of 16 matches, but the Quarterfinals saw them knocked out of the tournament by the team that then lost to Syntax Error in the Semifinals! This tournament was by far their best tournament finish made even more impressive by the size of the field!
Syntax Error is continuing to impress and the other two teams are only growing our expectations. At a tourney in The Dalles, Syntax Error beat Disconauts in the semis and went on to lose in the finals. This past weekend Disconauts were tournament finalists and won the Design award. Everyone is invited and we would love to see any younger students interested in STEM and robotics come by and watch the action and maybe even drive a robot.
Admission is free and volunteers are always needed. The robotics team is a self-funded school-based club, so donations or help with fundraising are always welcome.
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