Posen robotics team heads to FIRST World Championships
POSEN — In just its third season, the Posen Consolidated Schools FIRST Robotics team, Team 6077, the Wiking Kujon, is going to compete in next week’s FIRST Robotics World Championships at Cobo Hall in Detroit.
The team clinched a spot this past weekend at the Michigan State Championships at Saginaw Valley State University. The team finished the district season ranked 38 out of 508 teams in the state.
“It’s been a groundbreaking season for us,” coach Brian Konieczny said. “We’ve accomplished more than we ever have before and I think I attribute it to having the same core group of kids on the team throughout the years that we’ve been doing this.”
The team was a district event finalist at the Shepherd district competition and a district event winner at the Alpena district competition. Being a district event winner easily qualified the team for the state finals. Before the state finals, the team was only nine points away from clinching a spot in the world championships.
“We went into the state finals with 130 district points and we came out of it with 205,” Konieczny said. “I believe the cutoff was 139 so we easily qualified for the world championship.”
Junior Jeremy Styma said this season has been the team’s best season because of how much the team has improved.
“I think most of the issues that we’ve had in previous years have been worked out,” he said.
Konieczny said making the world championships in the team’s third year shows that hard work pays off.
“Every kid on our team was a rookie the first year and some didn’t know which way to turn a screwdriver,” Konieczny said. “The robot we built our rookie year, I would call a rookie robot. We played it safe, and not knowing how much we were going to be able to do in that six weeks so we kind of played it safe.”
Last year, the team’s second year, Konieczny said the team tried for a robot that could do everything.
“We made a very good one actually, but we had some bad luck in our competitions and some mechanical failures,” he said. “This year, the kids have really shined through and put something together that’s really good.”
Sophomore Matthew Szatkowski said during the first year of Posen robotics in 2016, he had no idea what was going on but after that year, he has had a much better understanding of everything.
“When we talk about design or something, we all know what’s going on and we all know how to improve,” he said.
Styma said during the season, teams get a chance to see other robots and the design of each robot.
“I think each season that we go into, we have a much better understanding of the mechanisms and what we need to get accomplished and how we can do it effectively,” Styma said.
Szatkowski said every year, the team learns flaws in its design and learns what would be a good or a bad idea.
Styma said because it’s the team’s first time going to the world championship and since it’s the last event of the year, everyone is excited.
“We want to do really well, but I think no matter what, we’ll just be happy to go,” he said. “We’re pretty confident about where we’re at, but we definitely think there’s a lot of improvements we can make to our robot.”
Konieczny said he’s not nervous about going to the world championships because he doesn’t have to do anything other than enjoy watching the team compete.
“I get excited when they’re out there competing,” he said. “When things go good, I get excited, but as a mentor and a coach, I don’t really get nervous because the pressure’s not on me. I think some of the kids do get nervous, but I think the fact that they performed so well in their first competition has got some of those jitters out.”
Julie Goldberg can be reached via email at jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5688.