There is a lot of time, effort, and dedication that goes into a sport, but in particular, as many freaks and geeks would argue, a sport of the mind. But, just like any other sport, if you would call it that, it simply takes one moment, one last-minute decision, or outcome to completely tear all of those components apart. And in the case of the entirety of Platte County Phantom Robotics, that culmination of all of those tiny little moments, not only cost all their teams’ only chance at their international competition, but destroyed the dynasty that they meticulously assembled.
The Platte County Robotics teams recently competed at their state competition at St. Charles Community College Regional Workforce Innovation Center in Wentzville, Missouri. Although each of the teams had spent an exemplary amount of time on their robots in preparation for the state, the tournament went completely opposite of what they expected.
Junior Mitchel McBratney is the team lead and both the lead designer and builder of the 9065S team. His main job is to break down and analyze the details of the annual, ever-changing VEX game, which introduces a completely new, themed game, field, and scoring objects. He then uses the design process to figure out the best way to build a bot for that game.
“So I will look at ideas, and then I will use CAD software to turn my ideas into something and express them. And then once that is done, I will help build the robot according to the CAD, so that way, we will have a functioning robot faster than most teams,” he explained.
McBratney had very high expectations for the state tournament, as he and the rest of his team had spent hundreds of hours cooped up in the confines of his clammy room, working and tinkering with his bot in pursuit of an overly ambitious goal.
Qualifying for the VEX Robotics Worlds Championship, which is the largest and most culminating tournament of the VEX Robotics season, brings students from all around the world to compete.
“Yeah, we [were trying] to make Worlds specifically through skills qualification, as having a top four skills would almost guarantee you go into Worlds and is a little bit easier than winning the tournament,” McBrantey said. “So we wanted the top five skills, and then we wanted to be top 10 ranks through, and to do that, we wanted to get more win points in other teams.”
McBratney also wanted to win the state championship, continuing the five-year hot streak of a 9065 team becoming state champions. However, it did not go the way that McBratney and his team had expected.
“We unfortunately [did not become state champs or qualify for Worlds]. The autonomous, which is coded, did not work the way we thought it would as most likely, because we drove all the way across the state, so the road probably did not help it out, and we had a pretty harsh schedule to work with, so I don’t think met those goals the way I attended to this year as a team lead.”
9065S was the team that they had struggled with the most issues, as they ended up with the worst record out of each of the 9065 teams, winning three games in the qualification matches out of their eight, and plummeting all the way down to 18th place. But even teams with some of the best records in the tournament still struggled.
“Our intentions were to do as well as possible. We weren’t going in with very high hopes, since we just finished our robot very recently, but we were hoping to do our best as we could and maybe get some awards,” junior Gavin Foster said.
Foster is the driver and lead designer of 9065H. Their team had really struggled a lot with the transition and communication issues at the beginning of the season, which had come a year before, but managed to quickly get back on track and prepare for their performance at state. Despite the outcome that had ultimately occurred at the tournament, Foster still believed that his team’s performance was as good as it could be.
“We didn’t get any awards, but I feel like we did make it far enough, especially since it’s the state championship,” Foster said. “We [had hoped] to do better, maybe even win the tournament. We ended in the semifinals. But that’s just how it goes when you have teams with better schedules than others.”
Phantom Robotics Coach Wendy Assel had also hoped for much better results for each of her teams than what had transpired.
“I was really hoping that they would be recognized for some of the notebooking, because I think, I believe, and I have seen some other teams’ notebooks, but I believe that our notebooks are really well organized and thought through, and the designs are really good, and I feel like I wanted them to get recognition for that hard work,” Assel explained. “And we have some really strong drivers, we have really strong encoders, I just kind of wanted them to see that our robots had the overall package, as far as the structural design of the robot and what it was able to do on the field.”
Assel also believes that there were a lot of additional issues that prevented any of the teams from ultimately snagging the win at the state tournament.
“I think sometimes it was pairings, the people, the other teams, they were aligned with, weren’t able to pull their own weight, or had issues. Sometimes, it was our own codes just weren’t doing what we needed them to do, get one point, and or even just to accomplish the tasks that they were coded to do. I think that was a lot of the challenges.”
All of Phantom Robotics’ ambitions and desires at the competition were crushed under the increasing pressures of nearly impossible obstacles and unavoidable challenges. But there was still one 9065 team that really scorched the competition.
Many people had the lowest expectations for 9065P. They were always seen and made fun of as “The Cleveland Browns” of Phantom Robotics, not only by other teams, but also by their sister teams. No one had expected they would end the qualifying matches off with a 100 percent win record.
“We were proud [of our performance] because our bot wasn’t necessarily performing the greatest, [but] we made really good use of strategy, and I feel like I was driving really well, which resulted in us still having a good showing,” senior Lane Callow said.
Callow is the co-team lead and driver of the 9065P team. Even though he was surprised at his team’s sudden success, Callow made sure to fully embrace it.
“And, of course, we had some lucky things go in our favor, which is, but we went 9-0, and then in the elimination rounds, we eventually paired up with 9065H, and then eventually lost,” Callow said.
Even though P team ended up as the second seed in the tournament, most of the top teams had not wanted to pick them as their alliance partner, with that same sense of perceived superiority. But Callow, with his team’s newfound crown, decided to skew the tournament of the newly determined underdogs.
“The way it works is, if someone declines you, below you, they can’t say yes to anyone else. So we decided to basically [scorch] all the other good teams over by not letting them pair with each other,” Callow explained. “So I went down the list strategically, and I stopped for the best teams and then eventually selected, and that made it easy for us to advance as far as we did.”
Even though it’s only been about a week since the tournament, and the season is still currently ongoing, nearly every single Phantom Robotics member has already been preparing to create their own award-winning robot. McBratney, especially, has made an endless list of goals that he wants to accomplish next season.
One of McBratney’s desires for the next year is to do more tournaments between the early and middle stages of the season, as he wants his team not to be in that bad grace period when other teams start to rebuild.
“So I want to do tournaments before most people rebuild. And then I want to make Worlds next year, also, I want to get, I want our team to get the first excellence award that I would ever get, which means that at the competition we are at, we are the most successful team overall.”
Coaches Assel and Kyle Perkins have also been getting ready for next season, as some team dynamics might be shaken up next year.
“I’m going to have to do some restructuring, partly because of all the seniors; we have a large group of seniors who are leaving. So we’re going to have to shift [people] on the teams, but also we’re starting to see some conflicts emerge amongst team members on a couple of different teams. So that’s something I’m going to take into consideration,” Assel said.
Platte County Phantom Robotics had lost at that state tournament in so many more ways than one. But that doesn’t mean that these teams are going to simply give up and let it all fall apart. Like all engineers, they are using all of their failures not only at the state tournament, but also throughout the season, to reflect, brainstorm, plan, and rebuild effectively.
