Onalaska robotics made it through a long day at the University Interscholastic League’s state championship held in Clear Creek Learner Support Center. A total of 14 matches Saturday, and they now have a state title to show for the hard work.
They weren’t bad in those 14 matches. The team of Zach Strong, Braiden Tyermann, Wyatt Fraga and Alex Hobbs didn’t lose – a perfect 14-0.
“We have a really, really good program and we’re in our seventh year of our program,” said coach and teacher Jo Ann Wheeler.
She is assisted by Angela Kennedy, who has been with the school’s robotics program since its start in 2020.
“We have kids from fourth grade through 12th grade participating,” Wheeler said. “It’s a four-member team. This year, we competed with three high school teams and we had six middle school teams competing.”
To get invited to participate in the state tournament, Onalaska had to win a tournament, competing against schools as large as 6A, some private schools, homeschools and NASA teams to even be invited to participate.
“There were 20 teams who were invited (to the state tournament) that met those qualifications,” Wheeler said. “Onalaska had two of those teams made up of the 20 participating. You’re limited to only having two teams.”
Classifications from 1A through 3A compete together.
“There are two aspects to the tournament. The match play is when two teams form an alliance,” said Wheeler. “Now, you don’t know who your alliance is going be for that particular match until the schedule is released right before the first match. So, you’re teamed with anyone that’s competing. You have to strategize and figure out your game plan in three minutes. You’re playing against an opposing alliance that’s in the same situation.
“In that match, the first 15 seconds is called autonomous, where they have programmed the robot – no driver, just all computer programmed – to maneuver the field and score points. Then, the winner of that 15 seconds gets a bonus of six points toward the total score at the end. The next phase of that one match is 1:45 driver controlled.
“That’s where they just go at it. You have four robots on a 12 x 12-foot field scoring and de-scoring until the buzzer sounds and the highest points wins. There are game elements on the field. And in this game, there are blocks they have to pick up and score in these chutes. They’re just going head-to-head and they have to game strategy and continuously change their strategy in 1:45.”
Trying to score and de-score in under two minutes, the robots can get damaged from collisions. Team members also need to perform repairs quickly to get their machine running.
“There’s a skills portion, where it’s just the one robot, one team. There’s a one minute driver controlled, they score, then there’s an autonomous, where they program it to. Then, you add those two scores together. We also won the skills championship, so we won it all.”
It is the third state championship in the history of Onalaska, with the other two coming in cross country and track.
“We’ve worked very hard. We started working on this game last May. We are on cloud nine. We’re a new program and I think we’re doing very well.”
