Novice and rookie teams from across the province gathered last Saturday (Feb 9th) at the Kelowna campus of Okanagan College for the Interior’s first VEX Robotics Tournament. A large contingent drawn from Vancouver schools took on local teams from Summerland and, somewhat less locally, Nakusp.
The larger than expected field of 22 teams filled the atrium of Okanagan College’s Centre for Learning in a competition that featured both conventional competition and both robot and programming skills challenges.
After qualifying rounds of six matches each, the leader board showed a broad spread of teams with top eight representation from Summerland (2 teams – one undefeated), Eric Hamber (two teams), Gladstone (three teams). Teams from Nakusp, King George and Seaquam filled out the middle of the pack with even win/loss records.
Before moving to elimination finals, a special series of Skills attempts were made by each of two senior Gladstone teams (2K and 2M) who had come to the event with that specific objective of achieving world class scores. They succeeded spectacularly. After three Robot Skills attempts, 2K had scored a high of 260 points in; good enough for a world rank of 14th. 2M focused on Programing Skills and managed to achieve a high score of 155; a tie for the third best world score.
Elimination round play ultimately came down to a face-off between an alliance of home-town favourite Summerland teams (1909C and 1909D) and a pair of Gladstone teams (2X and 2J) from which Gladstone emerged victorious.
Event results and awards can be found here
