Both will now advance to the regional competition at Colorado School of Mines
The competition was intense Saturday at the annual Golden Plains BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) Robotics Challenge held at Northeastern Junior College. In the end, Sidney High School and the Peetz School District boy's team came out on top.
This year seven teams vied for the top spot in the competition including Peetz School District boys and girls teams, Haxtun High School, Holyoke Jr./Sr. High School, Julesburg High School, Yuma High School, and Sidney High School.
BEST Robotics is a national organization, with local and regional challenges across the U.S. The purpose of the robotics challenge is to excite and inspire students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math while developing career skills for tomorrow’s technical leaders. Free to schools, all of the equipment and materials are provided to the teams at no cost.
This year’s theme, “Made 2 Order,” centered around the order fulfillment and distribution industry and challenged teams to create a robot for use in a fulfillment center. The robot had to be able to gather items to fulfill orders, move boxes to appropriate locations, and work as a collaborative robot, or “cobot,” by controlling the fulfillment center’s robot named Squeaky.
Leading the robotics challenge for the Golden Plains was hub director Larry Turner. He thanked all those that participated in the contest during what has been a challenging year. Turner shared that due to inflation the cost to build this year’s playing fields was so great that instead of each of the BEST hubs building their own separate field, three of the area hubs including Golden Plains decided to merge together to build one field for all three to use.
In talking about the costs, Turner also unfortunately informed the players, coaches, and families that this may be the last year for the Golden Plains hub challenge. The hub is hoping to get a grant from El Pomar for next year, but if they cannot secure enough funding they won’t be able to continue.
The Peetz School District boy's and girl's teams received the Spirit of Sportsmanship Award at the Golden Plains BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) Robotics Challenge Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022. (Callie Jones/Sterling Journal-Advocate)
During the competition, two teams competed in numerous three-minute matches, seeking to complete as many tasks as possible in a short amount of time. In between rounds, you could find teams quickly working to make repairs to their robot or making tweaks to it to help it run better. It wasn’t uncommon to see one team helping another, so each could give their best performance and rooting each other when one of the teams had a stellar performance during a match.
After a full morning of the competition, Sidney was in first place, followed by Julesburg, Peetz boys, Holyoke, Haxtun, Peetz girls, and Yuma.
Because there were fewer teams this year, there was no wildcard match, so all teams advanced to the semi-finals in the afternoon. For this portion of the contest, points scored in the morning competition did not count; instead, all teams started over with zero points.
After 12 matches, the four teams earning the most points to advance to the finals were Sidney, Yuma, Julesburg, and the Peetz boys team. While announcing who would be moving on, Turner commended all of the teams on how well they did, commenting that the semi-finals had seen some pretty close competition; in each round, there were teams tied or within just a couple of points of one another.
A member of the Peetz School District girl's team watches as another member guides their robot to move boxes to the appropriate locations inside the distribution center during the Golden Plains BEST Robotics Challenge Saturday, Nov. 5, 2022. (Callie Jones/Sterling Journal-Advocate)
In the finals, all teams again started with zero points and after six rounds Sidney came out the winner with a score of 205. Peetz took second place with 160 points; just five points below them were Julesburg in third place and coming in fourth was Yuma.
Both Sidney and Peetz will now move on to compete at the regional contest on Dec. 3 and 4, at Colorado School of Mines. Should those teams not be able to go, Julesburg and Yuma can fill in.
Several special awards were also handed out at the conclusion of the competition. The Spirit of Sportsmanship Award went to the Peetz teams; the Most Robust Robot Award, which goes to the robot that has the fewest problems during competition, was presented to Holyoke; and the Founders Award, which is given to the robot that is able to complete every task required, went to Sidney.
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