Summit robotics team advances in competition

The Summit High School robotics team has advanced to the Northwest District Championships competition after winning two state events.

The team, also known as FRC #5678 Retrobots, had its first competition a month ago, followed by another event last weekend.

Team members described the competition as the hardest fun they ever had.

The team of 12 had six weeks to build the robot, that they’ve named Doomba.

“We also have a very close team, so we know each other very well. It’s not like those big teams that have 50 members, but they don’t know each other very well,” team member Kiley Dallas said Tuesday.

The team has been practicing five hours a day, five times a week for competition. This year’s competition involves a medieval basketball-like game called Stronghold.

“The main objective is to shoot boulders into the opponent’s tower, to weaken and essentially capture the tower,” explained team member Kyle Ferrell.

The teams had a $4,000 budget and a 120 pound weight limit for their robots.

Summit’s team said their strategy was to score as many point as possible while also practicing what they call “coopetition.”

That requires them “to be competitive with your opponents, but also to work together but also help them when they need help, because they don’t want anybody to fail in this competition,” said team member Cullen Dallas.

This is just Summit’s second year of competition. The team will participate in the District Championships in Portland on Saturday, ranked 24th. If they maintain this ranking, they will advance to the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis later this month.

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