Robotics Create U.S. Open
By: Brenden Bolling
The robotics team journeyed to Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Monday, March 18, and competed over a span of three days in the VEX Robotics Create US Open. The team participating was called 71414A also known as Smooth Operators, this consisted of Sawyer Konert, Brandon Thomsen, Andrew Lienemann, and Makayla Shefl.
“My favorite meet of the season was definitely the state tournament, I loved the pressure of it,” Lienemann noted.
In the skills portion Smooth Operators placed 40th out of 138 teams. For the driver score they had their personal best of the season scoring 86. They scored a 15 in coding skills bringing their total score to a combined 101.
They were put in the blue division for qualifying rounds. In these rounds they would be competing in teams of two with a different random partner for each round. In their qualifying rounds they finished with a record of 7-6 ranking them 17th. In tournament play, Smooth Operators fell in the round of sixteen with the score being 61-37 after partnering with a team from Plano, Texas.
“Throughout the season we learned a lot and made constant improvements to become the best at the end,” Thomsen stated.
