The Boothbay Region High School robotics team made its debut at the Central Maine VEX Tournament in Augusta on Dec. 13.

Presented by the Robotics Institute of Maine, this tournament was open to schools from all over Maine who used VEX robots. Top Maine teams from the event qualified for the Maine State Championship. A total of 33 teams were in attendance.

Ten students in the robotics class from BRHS were able to attend the event along with their teacher, Emily Higgins. Despite this being the first year the students had ever used VEX robots, they finished strong and even made it to the final round.

BRHS came home with second, third and fifth place rankings.

In second place was Team 2, sophomore Dimitry Gosselin and junior Morgen Wilson. Team 4 finished third and included freshman Jake Brewer, senior Collin Thompson and sophomore Taylor Jackson. Team 3 got fifth place and included sophomore Noah Sherburne, senior Andrew Hawke and freshman John Marshall.

Also attending were sophomore Griffin Kane and junior Shane Johnson, who finished in 23rd place.

“It was a lot of fun, but we didn't expect to get far,” Thompson said.

“Crazy stuff happened sometimes,” Gosselin said. “One time this really tall robot tried to pick up a block and the whole thing just fell over.”

“And sometimes the match was decided in the last 10 seconds,” Brewer said. “The countdown was going 3, 2, 1 and we dropped a skyrise piece in time and scored four points.”

One round, one of the BRHS teams got a rather nasty shock — their controller was dead. It hadn't been plugged in and the charge was gone.

“Sometimes things go wrong,” Thompson said. “But the match was best two out of three, and we won the next two matches.”

Teams scored points by building towers of yellow skyrise pieces and by stacking blocks on top of poles or towers. Different robots are built for different tasks, such as stacking or pushing — as in pushing blocks closer to the robots that need them so time isn't wasted.

No part of a robot could be touching any part of the structure when the countdown ran out. If it was, the points did not count.

Each round started with a 15 second autonomous round, where the robot acted without human control. The rest of the round focused on humans controlling the actions of the robot.

“We didn't have the best robots there, but we had really good drivers,” Higgins said. “Some of the other teams really did well in the autonomous portion.”

Higgins said that one of the reasons BRHS did so well is because her class is full of gamers (people that play video games).

“Gamers can handle the heat of the moment and work well under pressure. They have really good focus and a lack of jitters,” she said.

Besides being a lot of fun, robotics class teaches students important skills in programming and technology. Another important skill taught is teamwork, as no robot was built and designed by only one student.

“Other teachers have come by and commented on how the teams have to work together to make a working robot,” Higgins said. “And learning how to be a team player is very important.”