From outside the Project Lead the Way suite at the Early College and Career Center, the hum of robots could be heard.

Its crunch time for all the Vex Robotics teams, and inside the suite, busy students work on their programs, tweak their robots, add new parts or practice a new strategy. Teams from Hardin Countys schools practice at EC3.

State competitions for Vex Robotics are a week away for the middle school teams and two weeks away for high-schoolers. The middle school contest is March 4 at EC3 in Elizabethtown. The high school competition is March 11 at Martha Layne Collins High School in Shelbyville.

Ten teams from Hardin County middle schools have qualified for state. At the high school level, 10 teams also have qualified. Teams from Hardin County have won state three consecutive times since the program started in 2013.

EC3 has been setting the pace for the state, said Jason Neagle, Project Lead The Way instructor for EC3. Our goal is to be good at the national and world level.

Neagle is aiming to win overall excellence in a robotics program. The first step, though, is to qualify for the Worlds competition in Louisville. To do that, Hardin County teams have to win at the state competition.

Weve set our goals high, Neagle said. We want to win excellence awards. Weve been knocking on the door for the past few years.

They hope to knock down the door this year, and hes optimistic about their chances.

THEY DON'T STOP

Thor Newsome, a seventh-grader at East Hardin Middle School, worked at building new arms for the teams robot at practice Wednesday. The new arms will act like a clamp and help the robot pick up more objects.

Thor and his team hope the change will help them earn more points, which could make a difference at the state competition. Their team, EHMS Vex A, currently is ranked third in the state.

A Vex competition has two parts: a head-to-head competition and a skills challenge. This year, robots are tasked with picking up yellow stars and soft-sided orange cubes and then throwing the objects over a 2-foot fence. The objects equal different points, with cubes having a higher value. The action takes place in a 12-by-12 arena.

Susan Hatfield, East Hardins Vex coach, wouldnt let them dismantle the robot until they built the new parts. After all, this is risky business, tweaking the robot so soon before a competition.

I told them not to mess up what youve got when you are third in state, Hatfield said.

East Hardin has three teams going to state, the most of any middle school in the district. Its Hatfields first year coaching the program.

Weve got a good team, she said. Kids spend hours programming. One kid stays up all night notebooking. They dont stop.

In a corner of the practice room, another team is working on programming their robot to be autonomous, meaning they will pick up objects and fling them over the fence without being controlled. Its a way to earn extra points, sixth-grader Gabi Sutherland said.

Near the end of their weekly practice, the teams robot could run on its own.

A TRADE-OFF

Tyler Sweckard and his team from John Hardin High School opted to make drastic changes to their robot this past week, switching up the motors.

Before, there were six motors in the robots chassis and four in the tower. This week, they took two motors from the chassis and put them in the tower. The change will give them more power but not as much speed.

Its a trade-off, said Sweckard, a senior.

Sweckard said it was stressful changing the robot so late in the season because he said the choice came down to efficiency. The new design will be more efficient.

On Thursday, the team had finished most of the work. All that was left to do was wiring and rewriting the robots programming.

Thats 4,000 lines of code I have to change, Sweckard said. Its going to be a late night for me.

Once the robot is put back together, the team will go back to practicing their driving skills. Sweckard said thats the best preparation for state.

Just practice, practice and more practice, he said. It never stops.

'ADD 30 TONS OF STRESS'

Andrew Schreacke dreams about robots, or rather the robot noise. He has nightmares about stripping gears.

Schreacke captains 6135W, the top team in the state. The Central Hardin High School junior also is the lead driver, meaning he controls the robot during competitions.

In January, the team was ranked No. 1 in the world. Theyve since dropped to No. 16, but Schreacke said knowing people in China and around the world were talking about his team was a great feeling.

I dont know if I can put it into words, he said.

Schreacke has come a long way in one year. Last year, his robot was incapacitated almost every match, so his was one of the bottom teams at EC3. He said he barely qualified for state the last two years.

Now, 6135Ws robot is the one to beat. He said theres added stress with their success.

Its as much as last year, but add 30 tons of stress, he said. This year, theres a constant battle to be the best.

In practice before state, Schreacke isnt tweaking the robot or writing new programs. Instead, hes working on new strategies for the skills challenge in which he tries to earn as many points as he can in 60 seconds. He said the new strategies should help rack up more points.

He estimated hes done the 60-second skills run 600 to 700 times.

But he doesnt mind the extra work or long hours. He wants to win.

We are raising the bar about what we think a Vex Robotics team should be, he said.

Katherine Knott can be reached at 270-505-1747 or kknott@thenewsenterprise.com.

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Local Vex Robotics teams ready for state - Elizabethtown News Enterprise