Snap-Its, the La Grande Adventist Christian School Lego robotic team, competed with 10 other teams from around NPUC on Feb. 26, 2023. Held at Auburn Adventist Academy, the regional event showcased what each team worked on and was judged on our teamwork, robotic missions and an energy-related project.
Throughout the year, we worked on building our robot, coding missions for the robot to perform and our team project that involved underground power lines. We learned that we accomplish a lot more when we work together as a team and to breathe when we get frustrated when the robotic missions don't work how we think they should. We also learned that making numerous small, iterative changes was better than making big changes in our coding process. In preparation for the competition, we presented our project to two members from Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative to get their feedback and thoughts.
The competition in Auburn was the first time JamieRae and Caleb competed. They joined the robotics team this school year. They were both very excited about the whole process and thought it all was amazing and a lot of fun!
Elliyah, who has been on the team for the last three years, was nervous about presenting the project to the judges. Once we started, however, it was amazing. We had so much fun with our skit and the brief talk explaining why we thought power lines would be safer underground and how they could be put underground with a machine we designed, called the Digger Z3.
It was fun talking to other kids, hearing their ideas, seeing what they built for their robot and how they accomplished their missions. The hardest part of the competition was when our robot had some issues and did not want to run as we had programmed. Thankfully, we had some time to troubleshoot the issues.
One exciting part about the event was when one of the missions we were struggling with worked during the matches! Elliyah was thrilled about that because it was something we had worked hard on. The most exciting part of the competition was winning the champion award — a Lego trophy and an invitation to the Championship Tournament in Florida. We did not think that we would win since we had not been called for some earlier awards leading up to the champion award. We were super surprised and super excited!
We are very eager to go to Florida for the May 7 competition against other teams from around the U.S. that won in their areas. Our team is working hard to get ready by trying to fix the bugs in our coding missions, working on our presentation some more and fundraising to be able to go. There is a lot of work to do, but we are determined to do our best and to have fun while doing it.
This is the trophy which the team of JamieRae, Elliyah and Caleb won at the recent Adventist Robotics meet at Auburn Adventist Academy.
Caleb, Elliyah and JamieRae pose with their Grand Champion trophy.
JamieRae, Caleb & Elliyah pose in front of the Adventist Robotics banner at Auburn Adventist Academy.
