On January 13, the Sherburne-Earlville Robotics team competed with four teams at the West Genesee VEX Robotics Tournament and won the triple crown. Participants were Gabe, Wes Macker, Trevor, Robert, Amon Van Alst, Brayden Smith, Jackson Barker, Blake Smith, Jon Ryan, Collin Maguire, and Merrick Griffith. Robots were Trogdor, Trogwindow, Get Good, and Straight Flush. (Submitted photo)

SHERBURNE — On January 13, the Sherburne-Earlville Robotics team competed with four teams at the West Genesee VEX Robotics Tournament which hosted thirty six teams from fifteen different schools.

“We compete in the VEX program, which is the most popular robotics competition in the world with about 20,000 teams worldwide,” said Wesley Macker, Science and Robotics teacher at Sherburne-Earlville School.

He said one team went to the world competition in Dallas twice and all three of the teams last year made it.

Macker added, “Currently, we have four teams: The Burninators; Absolute Aces; The Slightly Below Room Temperaturinators; and, Womp Womp.”

He said the robotics competition level is made up of high schoolers and middle schoolers grades 6 through 12.

“The team must build a robot that can complete a specific task, and this year, it's like playing soccer,” said Macker.

“Think RC cars with catapults, flywheels, and ways to manipulate objects,” he added. “Teams have to build robots to certain parameters then drive them head to head.”

The tournament had six awards available, three based on performance and three were evaluated by the judges. Two of the performance awards were given to the Tournament Champions for winning first place in the Finals Match Alliance, and the last was given to the Robot Skills Champion for highest combined top Programming and top Driving Skills Challenge score.