The fall robotics season was a clear demonstration of the rapid growth that is going on in high school robotics competition in BC. Last year PYRS hosted just one fall tournament, attended by sixty teams from BC and Washington state. This year 41 teams gathered at Enver Creek Secondary School in Surrey on the weekend of November 25/26 at the BC Season Opener, and a largely different group of 49 teams competed in the BC Fall Championship at McMath Secondary in Richmond the following weekend.
The Season Opener, at Enver Creek, was the first VRC tournament to be held in Surrey, and was an outstanding success with the host school winning the Excellence Award and qualifying for the World Championships this spring in Anaheim.
The Fall Championship brought out the “Big Guns” of local VRC competition with familiar faces from Gladstone Secondary, Team Exothermic and Team WASABI taking home a lion’s share of the trophies. Their long standing dominance is not going unchallenged, however, as several teams… most notably Isfeld Secondary, from Vancouver Island, pushed them to within one point in the playoff rounds. This sets the stage for the upcoming Vancouver Island VEX Championship in Courtenay, in January.
On behalf of all the copetitors PYRS would like to thank the host schools, particularly the teachers and students who volunteered with set up and event management and the dozens of community volunteers who came out to judge, ref, inspect, and organize students and their robots. Undertaking two robotics competitions in two weekends was a challenge, but the teams and teachers stepped up to the plate and pulled it off without a hitch. PYRS would particlarly like to express our gratitude to Brian Yu of University Hill Secondary who not only started new teams at his school this fall, but put together the IT infrastructure that makes the events run so well, and to iDesign Solutions for their continuing support.
The next big VEX event in the Lower Mainland will be the BC Championships, at BCIT, in March.
