Robotics Team Drives at State
Led by four sophomores and one junior, the Pierce robotics team, Noggin Boppers, also known as 71414A took part in the state VEX robotics competition held March 14-15 at Omaha North High School.
The team finished 6-2 in qualifying rounds for 10th placing. They selected a team, Shroud, from Wahoo as their partner for the single elimination tournament. Pierce won one match and then lost in the quarterfinals.
Speaking on team gains this year, team programmer Makayla Shefl remarks that learning PID (proportional integral derivative) code, “was probably the most difficult thing I’ve done this year. (It) took me a while to research, but once I got it, it helped our team tons. It’s just something to be proud of.”
In the skills portion of the competition, 71414A ended in 24th. The team’s bid for a VEX world tournament spot fell short but this incredible, young team learned so much, impressed the judges and proved they have a very bright future!
Now that the season has concluded, Pierce’s builder, Brandon Thomsen comments that some of his favorites were “talking to people from different schools because you get to talk to more people than other sports because you’re so focused on that. But since it’s the whole day, you get to talk to a lot more people.”
Looking to the future, the team will work on dividing tasks more amongst each other, Shefl says. Thomsen agreed. “More working together to get everyone on the same thing when every
“I learned a lot of problem solving skills. If things didn’t work, (we figured out) how to fix it,” Thomsen noted.
