News Photos by Julie Goldberg Team 7244, the Huskies Robotics from Atlanta Community Schools, tries to put a power cube on the scale to gain points for their alliance team on Saturday.

ALPENA — Twenty-four teams competed Saturday in the Bots on the Bay offseason robotics competition at Alpena High School.

The teams played last year’s game, in which they had to put power cubes on scales, switches, and vaults to gain points. The qualification matches were two alliances of three teams each competing against each other.

All 24 teams competed in the playoff matches in alliances of three teams.

The new season starts in January, and the teams will have to learn a new game. But, to gain experience before the season starts, teams were letting freshmen practice driving on Saturday to give them a feel for what a robotics competition is like and how chaotic the competition can be.

Alpena High’s Brianna Boyk and Matthew Guest were two of the freshmen who practiced driving on Saturday. It was also their first competition, and they have learned from others to stay calm during the competition and learned some mechanical items with the robot.

Guest said with the real competitions in the spring will be more chaotic than an offseason bout, but it’s fun to be able to compete and practice driving.

“Before today, I never thought I would want to be a driver, I thought it was going to be way too stressful, but now it’s like, really fun, like I want to be a driver every time,” Guest said.

Boyk said the first time she drove the robot was a crazy experience, while Guest said he was nervous.

But they both said that they want to continue learning how to be better drivers.

“There’s so much pressure and it feels like it’s all on you,” Boyk said. “I also feel nervous when I’m on the controls.”

Boyk and Guest are on Team 5505, V2 Robotics, and they said that team is almost all freshmen, with a few seniors. They said it’s a weird experience for their team, because the seniors are experienced and have to teach the freshmen everything to help their team succeed.

Alpena High teacher Melissa Doubek said Saturday was an opportunity for the younger students to grow and develop. She said the offseason competition helps the teams figure out who wants to drive the robot, who can help develop strategies, and who works well with their team.

Since the Alpena robotics programs lost a lot of seniors to graduation last year, Doubek said freshmen have been stepping up to help with the robots.

“It’s a rebuilding year for us,” she said. “We’ve got to train all new drivers and all new mechanical students that can fix a broken robot on the spot. This has been a great opportunity for growth.”

There were teams from all over the state at the high school on Saturday, and Event Coordinator John Diamond said it was great to have new teams come to Alpena and compete.

Boyk said it was fun to see the other teams and learn from them about what they do with their robot.

“You get to see how they do the robot differently and, like, how they set theirs up and, like, how they work with each other,” she said.

“We can also build relationships with other teams and they can become friends,” Guest said.

Diamond said the event went very well and all the teams had a great time. He said there was a great group of volunteers helping and the community supported the teams who came Saturday.

“It’s great to have the community support,” Diamond said.

There was a delay with the field to start the day Saturday, but Diamond said everything was on schedule and flowed very well. He said teams with younger students competing in their first tournament were following the schedule and kept things moving smoothly.

Diamond said there’s always something they can learn from an offseason competition to help prepare the school for the two spring competitions that Alpena High hosts. He said they took notes on what worked well and what didn’t work well on Saturday, and every team and volunteer will give Diamond input on how the competition went for them.

“We’ll build on that for our spring tournaments,” Diamond said.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com or 989-358-5688.