by Stephanie Palazzolo, senior editor

After years of uninterrupted victories, the Consol robotics team was shocked to receive third place at the Brazos BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) competition on Oct. 25. However, their disappointment turned to joy after receiving the even bigger surprise that they had actually won.

“I knew that the level of work they did was worth more than just 3rd place, especially without them responding that the presentations had gotten messed up, the booth had fallen down or the robot had fallen down,” Taylor said. “If it were second place, I probably wouldn’t think as much, but third place, that’s a big set of points. And so I knew, in my gut and in my heart, that something was wrong.”

That night, Taylor sent an email to the director of the BEST competition, asking if they could have a copy of the points sheet in order to see where they went wrong.

“We all wanted to see the scores because we wanted closure,” robotics president senior Pablo Leon said. “We usually do good, and everyone complimented our booth, but we didn’t win Best Booth. We just wanted to know where we got points taken off from, where we have to work on for next year. Everyone was obviously mad and on edge and everything, but we just tried to wait until we got the scores.”

Taylor was in the middle of a meeting with the TEA when he received a call back from the organization.

“Because I care about these kids so much, I had to leave my TEA meeting, step out in the hallway and talk to the director,” Taylor said. “[The judges] had forgotten a whole chunk of our scores. They put it in for the top teams, but for some reason, they left our school off. ”

With the added score from the team’s robot, Consol came out in first place. Although only one team usually advances from state, the competition directors contacted the state portion of the competition and were allowed to let two teams continue in the contest.

“I didn’t want to deny the other school the opportunity for success at state too,” Taylor said. “Since they allow two teams to go, I told them to just put us as a tie for first place, and we’ll see who the better team is at state.”

However, with the time between the regional competition and learning that they had actually received first place, the team lost precious time for preparation for the state competition.

“It took about three or four days off of our actual time where we could get ready for state, so we lost a little bit of time there, but this group is pretty phenomenal,” Taylor said. “ I mean, they’re already practicing with the robot, and we normally tinker with the robot all the way till we leave for state. So they’ve got a whole week to practice with the robot; everything else is just being refined and being put back together. They give themselves timelines, and they stick to them. They’ll be ready.”

The team will spend part of the remaining time reviewing their performance at the regional contest, which wasn’t without its flaws and problems.

“The mini-model was sitting at the table, and someone walked by,” junior and Head of Marketing Ann Yue said. “It basically did a flip and landed face down. There were parts all over the ground, and it was really, really bad. We’re remaking it now by using the 3D printer to print pieces of the mini model because it’s just a lot easier and faster than having to do it by hand.”

In addition, the team will focus their efforts on improving their already impressive robot and fixing any of the issues that were caused from Regionals.

“They did an excellent job at regionals, and so we’re just kind of critiquing where we want a little bit more,” Taylor said. “I pointed out a couple things that I saw, just from pictures alone, and we looked at the score sheets to see how we could improve the points where we got taken off. We’re just doing the same thing we did for regionals, but doing it a little bit better.”

The theme for this year’s competition is “Blade Runner,” in which each team’s robot will have to maneuver through a prairie chicken habitat, carry parts of a windmill across a bridge and assemble the windmill on the other side.

“We’re not going to assemble anything, because that would require a lot more effort,” Yue said. “We’re just going to move parts over, and that’ll give us points. There are teams who decided they would stick the windmill blades into the actual hub and have people raise the hub up. It’s more complicated to do because your robot has to be very precise.”

Even without completely assembling the windmill, the team still can still use its efficiency to receive points, and there’s no denying their impressive accomplishments.

“If you’ve never looked at robotics, take a look at what these kiddos do in a six-week period of time,” Taylor said. “You’ll realize that it’s quite a phenomenal task, and they deserve tons of hugs and praise.”

Come support the robotics team at the state BEST competition on Nov. 14th-15th at the Curtis Curwell Convention Center in Garland, TX.