League finals were held for the VEX robotics Kern River league on the past Saturday, December 10; out of the three Burroughs teams attending, one won the tournament and another received an award for the innovation and design of their robot. The 7422H team had to perform a last-minute robot swap before the competition. “We knew building an experimental turret-based robot was risky, but we planned ahead and ensured that our old robot stayed in working condition,” said junior Logan Elwell. 

 The 7422B team was eliminated in the quarterfinals but still received the innovate award given to the team with the best documentation and robot. According to Rowen Nelson, the “b” team plans to participate in the “last chance tournament” to receive a qualification to the state competition at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in early March.

In any case, both teams have their work cut out for them as the upcoming three months will be full of practice and refinement of robots. Club advisor Damien Jacotin has high hopes for the “H” teams turret robot, and builder Keiron Rank says, “although we have the platform working in order to compete with the more competitive teams we will have to concentrate on making all the systems work one-hundred percent of the time with near-perfect accuracy.”

While the competition was an overall win, the engineering and design process is still ongoing; however, the extended time period does give breathing room for the teams to step back and see a bigger picture of what is needed to make Burroughs proud.