INDIANAPOLIS
In the final regular-season robotics tournament, Conner Sims and Simeon Bauman earned a repeat trip to the Indiana VEX Robotics State Championship.
The Trinity Lutheran High School sophomores were the skills and tournament champions at the VEX Invitational on Feb. 22 in Warsaw.
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They rode that momentum into the state’s biggest stage for robotics Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, making the top 16 and then winning a match with an alliance from Heritage Christian 38-35 to move into the top eight.
They, however, lost their next battle 32-24, falling short of a trip to the world championship.
Sims and Bauman had nothing to hang their heads about, as they have two more years to make it back to Lucas Oil Stadium.
“It’s awesome just being able to even participate in this big event. The competition is amazing. It’s a reward for all of our hard work that we put into the season,” Sims said.
“It’s really, really cool being here,” Bauman said. “It’s an honor because there aren’t a lot of teams that make it.”
All three Trinity teams made it to state this year. Also competing Saturday were Team 1483J consisting of sophomore Preston Kovener and juniors James Thomack and Kash Siefker and Team 1483A consisting of sophomore Dylan Green. Kovener, Thomack and Siefker also made it into the top 16.
A plus going into next season: All of the team members return.
“It was definitely an accomplishment this year,” Sims said. “We still have two years to go in this.”
Jackson County also had five teams competing in the elementary division and three in the middle school division Saturday.
Immanuel Lutheran School’s state qualifiers were third-graders Adam Alberring and Christopher Pumphrey, 520G; fourth-graders Daniel Bode and Sam Parisi, 520K; fourth-graders Brody Keith and Dane Gillaspy, 520E; fifth-graders Chloe Rudzinski, Zoe Croquart and Noah Lawrence, 520Z; fifth-graders Emory Helton and Rylan Adair, 520C; and sixth-grader Lauren Bode and seventh-grader Kade Gillaspy, 520R.
Brownstown Central Middle School’s state qualifiers were eighth-graders Cody Burnside, Dustin Brewer and Alli Dillard, 98098C, and eighth-graders Colton Whittymore, Conner Wynn and Luke Imlay, 98098G.
The top 385 Indiana teams from elementary, middle and high schools competed in the third annual event, making it the largest state championship in the country.
Indiana has more schools participating in robotics programs than any other in the United States, and that’s due to TechPoint Foundation for Youth’s State Robotics Initiative.
Since 2016, the organization has focused on growing robotics programs in Indiana’s elementary, middle and high schools. The state’s VEX team registration has grown by 430% in the last four years, going from 399 teams to 2,113, according to the foundation.
This year, the high school competition centered around the game Tower Takeover. Played on a 12-by-12-foot square field, two alliances composed of two teams each competed in matches consisting of a 15-second autonomous period, followed by a 1-minute, 45-second driver-controlled period. The object was to attain a higher score than the opposing alliance by placing cubes in towers or scoring cubes in goals.
For Team 1483S, Sims served as the driver, and Bauman was the programmer and coach.
“Obviously, I have the building and driving, and he has programming, so it all goes together, but he’s not afraid to call me out on stuff, which you’ve got to have,” Sims said. “He definitely gets my attention whenever I’m up there, so if I can’t see everything because I’m looking at the robot and he can see everything, he just lets me know, and we get the stuff done.”
The two also worked together last year as freshmen.
“We care about this a lot, and we both work very, very hard on it,” Bauman said. “If we had one person on our team that was here all of the time doing this and one person never showed up, that wouldn’t work very well. But since we’re both here about every practice, it works well.”
The duo’s autonomous didn’t work in their final match, so Dallas Goecker, who coaches the Immanuel robotics team and helps at Trinity, told them to work on alignment and consistency issues and they will be back at state next year.
“That’s the stuff that you’ve got to deal with next year making sure you have perfect,” Goecker told them.
Goecker said it was great to see all three of Trinity’s teams make it to state.
“It’s a very young group of kids,” he said. “There are a lot of really, really good teams in Indiana. The top 10 teams in Indiana are very good relative to the rest of the world, so trying to break into that group has been a struggle for them, and they are getting there now. That was really great to see, and next year and the year after, they are going to be really, really strong.”
On Saturday, Immanuel’s sole middle school team, Lauren Bode and Kade Gillaspy, made it to the top 24 of its division, and Helton and Adair were the only local elementary duo making it to the finals in their division, placing ninth.
“Immanuel has a great program. Those kids kind of operate very independently,” Goecker said. “If they don’t want to be pushed, I don’t really push them. … But I’ve got other teams that they want to be No. 1 and they work hard, so they kind of choose how much time and effort and energy they want to put into it. Some of these teams really enjoy it and really put a lot of time and effort into it.”
Brownstown Central Middle School also had a team make it to the top 24: Wynn, Whittymore and Imlay.
Wynn and Whittymore made it to state for the second year in a row. Wynn said adding Imlay was a plus, as they alternated which two team members competed in the eight preliminary matches and finals.
The elementary and middle school teams’ game was Squared Away. Played on a 4-by-8-foot rectangular field, two robots competed as an alliance in 60-second teamwork matches, working collaboratively to score points.
Wynn said he specialized in stacking a green cube in the first 30 seconds, while Whittymore and Imlay were best at stacking higher cubes and placing orange balls the rest of the way.
While Wynn said competing at state was a little nerve-racking and they had to battle through some adversity, they were happy to make it to the finals.
“It has helped me know how to control myself under pressure,” he said.
Coach Karen Ault said she is proud of her two teams for making it to state. Wynn and Whittymore also made it to the finals last year.
“That’s really tremendous when you get out there and there’s a lot of pressure on you,” Ault said. “It’s the problem-solving and the figuring out and the ‘What can we do here?’ It’s a long season, and they kind of get bored, and then they start pouring it on if we can keep their focus.”
All six Brownstown students who competed at state will move up to the high school program next school year.