The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts robotics team earned recognition in two recent competitions.
The team won three first-place honors and finished third overall at a local tournament held Nov. 5 at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Team members won first-place awards for notebook, marketing and robot performance. Their third-place overall finish qualified them to move on to the regional tournament.
The BEST of Texas Regional Competition was held Dec. 3 in Frisco, Texas. The team won second place for the Most Robust Robot.Team members included Elijah Goodrich, Evan Quirk, Parker Hance, Trinity Kyles, Robert Boerwinkle (captain), Nasya Choy, Buddha Moore (captain), Charlotte Boehme (captain), Vicky Zhu, Gavin Chen, and Melike Senlikci, all contributed. The team is sponsored by computer science instructor Nicholas Seward.
“The local competition was a real test of our resilience and adaptability,” said Robert Boerwinkle, one of the team’s three captains. “The rules of the game changed unexpectedly, and we had to almost completely redesign our robot on the fly. In the end, we pulled through and came out on top. I’m very proud of the team.”
Two team members spoke about the lessons they learned from competing with their classmates.
“Joining the robotics team has been a great experience for me,” Nasya Choy said. “I joined because I like robotics, but it has also improved my public speaking skills, teamwork skills and documenting an engineering notebook.”
Evan Quirk said the work leading up to the competitions as well as the contests themselves provided opportunities to grow as a team.
“I’ve learned the value of teamwork and how important it is to communicate with those you work with. The competitions have been a great experience for all of us,” Quirk said.