BY NICHOLAS BRANDT

Robotics has placed as quarterfinalists during their attendance of the annual Beach Blitz off-season competition in Huntington Beach on the weekend of Oct 12 to Oct 14. Operating the robot were Robotics members Richard Lee, Damien Albitres, Mayleen Ocampo, Luke Chang, and Natalie Rios. Team 968 finished off their off-season competitions strong with an impressive performance while also taking the opportunity to provide the newer members with their first competition experience. Beach blitz is hosted by reputable Robotics teams and provided a well-organized event for the team to prove exactly why they are championships material.

“Beach Blitz is similar to every other one of our comps except that it is shorter. It’s technically a two day competition with Friday being our load-in. We had a group of our students go with our mentor to drop off all of our stuff and the robot so that our pit would be ready for the competition. The actual competition is Saturday and Sunday while the practice and qualifying matches take place on Friday,” Robotics president Yu Ling Zeng said.

The game mode that Robotics competed in was known as “Level Up”, the very same game mode that appeared in First Robotics Competition (FRC), the highest level of competition in the competitive Robotics scene and their spring competition last year. However, in Beach Blitz, the competition is much more brief and thus progressed much faster. Team 968 progressed to the elimination matches on Sun, Oct 14 and made it to the quarterfinals in the competition.

“This year, our team has shrunk because of the amount of alumni we had last year. We are really hoping to focus on not only the quality of the robot, but also on our awards side to show the judges that we have been doing a lot of community stuff and that we are really trying to push engineering and STEM into our community,” Zeng said, “We have high hopes for awards and going to champs this year.”

Robotics will begin their build season early in January to prepare for their upcoming season in the spring. Students interested in Robotics should consult Ms. Tam in F-8 to learn more about the program.