Photo courtesy Daniel Ernst • Members of Kingston High School’s robotics Team No. 4994 — The Robo-Cards — pit crew make adjustments between matches Saturday at Troy Athens High School. Pictured, left to right, are Kylan Pennington, Jared Koehler and Brittney Giddings. Below, a shot of the team’s robot, Quindecim, in action. The robot’s name means 15 in Latin — the year of the competition it was built for.
By Bill Petzold
Editor
KINGSTON — The robots aren’t programmed to feel any nervousness, and out at Kingston High School, the human element of Team 4994 — the Robo-Cards — are feeling pretty confident as well heading into this week’s First in Michigan State Championship which begins Wednesday at the DeltaPlex Arena in Grand Rapids.
The competition brings 102 of the state’s best teams together — with a shot at the national tournament in St. Louis, Missouri, one good performance away.
Kingston, a second-year team, qualified for the State Championship after good showings at two district tournaments. The second happened at Troy Athens High School this past weekend. After a rough start, the Robo-Cards rallied back to score big-time points in their final two qualifying matches, earning a selection in the alliance round and punching their ticket to the state championships.
For Kingston High School junior Anthony Wilcox, a member of the Robo-Cards’ drive team, it was just another comeback this year. In November, Wilcox suffered a ruptured appendix which nearly killed him. It was a long wait as he recovered.
“I was out of school for almost two months,” Wilcox said. “I came back in January, and that’s when the competition starts. I had to do a lot of homework I’d missed over two months. When I wasn’t working on the homework I’d work on the robot, and when I got bored with the homework — which happened fairly often — I’d work on the robot.”
For Wilcox and his fellow Robo-Cards, it’s easy to feel confident knowing they “dialed in” their machine during the final matches of the district at Troy.
“We ended up having a lot of really bad luck,” Wilcox said. “At Kettering, things went smoothly. This one was just a lot of bad luck.”
Wilcox said that other robots on Kingston’s alliance kept breaking down, impeding their ability to advance through the qualification rankings. Another problem was that teams kept tipping over during matches. Finally, having had enough, the Robo-Cards used their machine to help stand another team’s robot back on its feet — the only team to do so during the tournament. Wilcox said the kind gesture earned the team special recognition, to go along with a second Creativity Award the team earned for its unique gripper design. The team also earned the award at the Kettering district, and Wilcox said he and his teammates have not seen a similar design anywhere in the state.
“At Troy, we weren’t doing what we were doing at Kettering that made us good,” Wilcox said. “We finally said on the last two, ‘We’re going to do our own thing,’ and we scored something like 100 and 120 points and jumped 13 spots into 18th place in our last two matches.”
Wilcox said the Robo-Cards were selected by the No. 5 seed during the Alliance Selection earning them a trip to states and a chance to take part in the district playoffs — but the group was bounced out in the quarterfinals.
And now, Grand Rapids and the State Championships await. The Robo-Cards face 102 challengers with the top 68 teams advancing to nationals. At present, Kingston’s Team 4994 sits at 65th in the rankings out of 347 teams in the state.
“It would be nice (to advance),” Wilcox said. “Hopefully we win. Making it to states is a big deal as it is, but making it to nationals would make it all the more special. That would definitely be fun.
“Right now though, everybody is just trying to get some sleep. You don’t get a lot of time just to hang out and stuff, at the latest you get there (for competition) at 8 in the morning, and then you’re there until 8 or 9 at night and you go get some food. You can’t sleep at any of these things, it’s too loud between the music and the people the robots.”
Cheerleading takes on an added dimension at FRC events, as teams, parents and friends dress in wacky costumes and dance between each match.
“It’s a big camaraderie thing,” Wilcox explained. “It’s not like sports, where it’s like ‘we play them, so we don’t like them.’ Here it’s like ‘You play with and against us, and you’re not too bad.’ ”