Evergreen robotics team wins award in global competition
A robotics team from Evergreen Middle School competed in the VEX Robotics World Championship in May and took home the Excellence Award, the highest achievement in the global competition.
The team, named “47C with Fire,” consisted of students Brooke Lin, Maddie Tsai, Angela Dong and Manya Pradeep Narayan. Lin and Tsai were seventh graders at the time of the competition, which took place between May 23 to 29. Dong and Pradeep Narayan were in eighth grade.
This was their first year working together as a team and for many of them, it was their first year even doing robotics.
47C With Fire competed in the “Teamwork” category of the competition. They worked with other robotics teams from around the globe to score as many points as possible. Typically, the event is held in Texas, but it was virtual this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The competition involved a team interview with the judges and an examination of the team’s engineering notebook, which kept track of their progress throughout the season.
An impressive interview, a detailed engineering notebook, and strong collaboration with other teams led 47C With Fire to take home the Excellence Award. This award is given to teams in each level of the competition.
Over the course of the year, the team collaborated at team captain Brooke Lin’s house, which is also where they congregated when the awards were announced.
“We did not think we won anything because they announced some of the other awards already. It was really cool when our team name was announced,” said Pradeep Narayan.
Pradeep Narayan acknowledged that not being able to meet in-person with other Evergreen robotics teams was a challenge. Typically, the different teams that are part of Evergreen’s Robotics Club would go over ideas or help each other through challenges.
However, the Eastlake High School Robotics Team was able to help answer some of the middle school team’s questions when building and programming their robot.
Pradeep Narayan explained that the high school team introduced new programming concepts which greatly improved the success rate of their robot, and this played a huge factor in their success.
Wei Luo, who serves as the co-chair of the Robotics Club at Evergreen, as well as the coach for the 47C With Fire team, believes that having an all-girls team composition helped.
“I think we had an advantage having an all-girls team. They are all very detail-orientated and good at speaking and presentation,” said Luo.
She also attributed the team’s success to good team chemistry.
Since the competition could not be held in-person, VEX is sending trophies to the team to acknowledge their success at the competition.
