They say everything is bigger in Texas.
The Cranberry Area High School robotics teams certainly found this to be true when the students attended the VEX World Championship in Dallas earlier this month.
Five teams from Cranberry schools, including 19 students, two teachers, and many supportive family members, made the trek to Dallas to compete with 800 other teams at the championship.
“We couldn’t be more thankful for all the support from the district, the families and our community with helping to make this trip possible. I am also so proud of our students stepping up and taking on so many responsibilities to help out, on top of their own preparations for the competition,” O’Brien told the newspaper in an email.
When the Cranberry students arrived at the tournament, O’Brien said they found it “overwhelming.” Eighth-grader Raquel Knight described her initial impression as “confidence destroyed.”
Junior Lucas Blum said the building that housed the competition was a half-mile from one end to the other, and their booth of supplies was nowhere near the competition arenas. “If you forget something, you have to run the whole way,” he said.
The high school and eighth-grade teams competed in different categories at the competition. The high school students faced their peers from May 5 to 8, and the junior high teams entered the arena from May 8 to 10.
When it came time to compete, each team was paired randomly with another team to show down against two other randomly paired teams. Each team participated in 10 two-minute rounds throughout the tournament.
To win, each team’s robot had to coordinate with their allied team’s robot to complete certain tasks in the rink before their opponents did. This required each team to work together with a team of strangers, sometimes from another country.
Most of the teams were great to work with, high school student Riley Fry said. “Everyone was incredibly friendly,” and one student from Mexico shared his Mexican candy and talked about his hometown.
Along with meeting teams from other countries, teachers O’Brien and Zach Bedee introduced the students to as many cultural experiences as they could.
When they weren’t competing, the students visited the John F. Kennedy Memorial and the Dallas World Aquarium. The students also enjoyed seeing an outdoor church service beside their hotel and a prom at the hotel.
During a recent school board meeting, Cranberry High School Principal Ritt Smith expressed thanks to the principals’ admin, Carol Bell, for planning the trip. “We got 19 students there and 19 students back safely,” Smith said. “That’s what I cared about.”
Along with the experience of traveling there and back, the students unanimously agreed the event was worth it.
Blum described the experience as “exhausting, but fun.”
Knight said, “It was fun. It was cool to be there.”
Shumaker said, “I had never flown before, so that was cool” and that the trip was “a great bonding experience. It was like a big family of a bunch of teenage people.”
Blum said at the competition, it was apparent that some teams had greater resources to work with than others. There were teams with dozens of students, and some with only four. Some students came from special robotics schools or had engineers advising them.
Fry said, “Yes, and we made it that far without an engineer. We don’t have what you have, but we can do it, too, just as good.”
Blum said the World Championship showed, “People from the middle of nowhere can make big things, not just the rich people. All people can have the opportunity to do something.”
