Socorro robotics team competes against international field – El Defensor Chieftain

The H.O.T. Squad, a FIRST LEGO League (FLL) robotics team from Socorro traveled to Fairmont, West Virginia to compete in the Mountain States FIRST LEGO League Invitational July 7-9 9. The team was composed of local home-schooled and Cottonwood Valley Charter School students and led by coaches Gwen Valentino and Jim Jackson. The team competed in multiple categories with 40 of the best FLL teams from the United States, Canada, Brazil and Uruguay.

H.O.T Squad team members attended the invitational with two other New Mexican teams from Albuquerque. All teams competed in three categories: Core Values, Project, Robot and Robot Performance. The event was hosted by the West Virginia Robotics Alliance, Fairmont State University and the WV High Technology Foundation.

The Core Values are at the cornerstone of the FIRST LEGO League. During the competition, teams are tasked to demonstrate how they embraced each of those core values which are: 1. We are a team; 2. We do the work and find solutions with guidance from our coaches and mentors; 3. We know our coaches and mentors don't have all the answers; we learn together; 4. We honor the spirit of friendly competition; 5. What we discover is more important than what we win; 6. We share our experiences with others; 7. We display Gracious Professionalism and Coopertition in everything we do.; 8. We have FUN!

For team members Iriana and Ithan Valentino, they enjoyed the social and core values portion of the competition the most. Ithan shared that the dance party before the awards was my favorite part. Iriana said she best enjoyed, meeting team members from other countries and sharing what we have in common.

Team members Gavin Spitz and Jared Hitchcock expressed that they most enjoyed being able to travel and experience West Virginia while Joshua Walsh said his favorite experience was having a pickup soccer game with Team Brasil.

Walsh, the project team leader said, I felt really good about our project and I really did think we were going to come away with an award. That didnt happen but when I saw the judging rubric, we only had one category just below the top score and now I know how to fix it for the next competition. We had the judges rolling with laughter during our skit; they really got it.

The team created a pet evacuation kit called the My Pet Hero which could be customized to your pet when ordered from the website Walsh created.

Ixchel Valentino, the teams lead robot builder and programmer said, We knew going in to the competition that our robot performance scores were going to be in the middle of the pack so we just focused on our ability to communicate our engineering notebook and being able to perform under pressure. The team definitely faced the pressure. During the trip, the robots gyroscope had some damage meaning the robot couldnt line up correctly during a mission and test runs did not have the same results seen while practicing in Socorro.

It was tough but I actually liked programming on the fly when things didnt work on the second day, said Ixchel. On Saturday night, while other teams were playing and hanging out around campus, the H.O.T. Squad was brainstorming new programming code and approaches to up their robot performance scores. In spite of the challenges Ixchel said, It was super stressful but it was so worth it; in the end Im glad that I was a robot driver and I was so happy when everything worked in the final alliance round.

The H.O.T. Squad paired up with the Flaming Dragon Bots from Pennsylvania for the alliance competition; they made it to the semifinals and missed the finals by only 13 points. Walsh, the other driver added, Ixchel and I were stressed all weekend because the wall mission didnt work then our entire team exploded with cheers when it worked perfectly in the last round.

This opportunity wouldnt have been possible without the support of our fan club and local organizations, said team coach Gwen Valentino. We had donors who appreciate the program pay to get the team to West Virginia. New Mexico FIRST LEGO League partners, Socorro County, New Mexico Tech and the City of Socorro sponsored our entry fees and pit design and gave us tons of give-aways to share with participants. We were really able to show off our community. The 3rd Phase Foundation helped outfit the kids with very cool tee-shirts using the FIRST robotics grant won in 2016. Valentino added, We did a lot of bragging about Socorro and New Mexico Tech; out of our six team members, five of their parents (and one grandparent) are New Mexico Tech alumni.

Though the H.O.T Squad didnt come home with any awards this year, the team came back with excellent feedback from the judges to improve on their performance next year. Coach Valentino said the next FLL challenge will be released in August and most of the team members are expected to return. These kids had a taste of international competition and they want to qualify for the World Competition in 2018. I think they have a shot.