The Ridley VEX Robotics Team was at it again this weekend at Governor Simcoe School for the Southern Ontario VEX Robotics Tournament. The team took two robotics teams to Governor Simcoe to do battle with 58 other teams from the region and the GTA.
Our first match of the day was a disaster. Team 1509R, piloted by driver Tyler Porter and co-driver Enoch Ho and coach McCambly had a drive shaft pop free in their first match and wound up tipping over, twitching helplessly on the ground. It was an ugly beginning. After that, however, Tyler drove the machine with ever increasing skill, winning his next 5 matches for a preliminary record of 5-1.
Taylor Petrick drove our other machine, 1509B, with advisor Steve Docherty and coach Reimer finishing with a win against the best opponents on the last preliminary match to post a 5 win, 1 tie record. Taylor was also able to lay down superb skills challenge scores, scoring an incredible 113 points, 4 off the world record! (out of thousands of matches worldwide).
Our scouting team anchored by scout-master Cheryl Wong along with Jacob Eschweiler, Hayyan Khalid, David Yang, Jason Wang, and Igal Flegmann did a superb job of finding out the strengths and weaknesses of each of our upcoming allies and opponents for every match.
Steve Docherty, with the help of Taylor and others, was able to wow several sets of judges circulating around the auditorium with unique features of our machines that demonstrated clever ideas put into actions, combining the best of inventive thinking, physics, math and design. Because of these features, the first of 3 trophies won for Ridley was the ‘Amaze’ award for innovation and design. This was largely Steve’s award.
Since Taylor won the 1-minute driver’s challenge, (and scored the second highest as well) we qualified a second machine for the World Championships at ESPN (in Disney, Florida) mid-April!
The biggest surprise of the day, especially after such a horrible start, was Tyler’s team. They fought their way through some tough opponents to get to the quarter finals, beat two machines ranked higher than them in the 1/4’s and semis, and eventually came second to the number 1 ranked team in the tournament. Their effort was outstanding! Since the top two teams qualify for the worlds at ESPN, we have now qualified all three of our machines for the world championships. Only 320 teams make it (out of over 3000 from 20 countries).
If you see any members of the team, please congratulate them. They made Ridley proud today. Thanks to Mr. Leigh, Mr. Martin and Ms. OR for joining us for the last three rounds. It was a rewarding (and exhausting) way to spend the first day of exams.
Well done team 1509, Rmageddon!