Cedar Catholic competes in robotics meets

HARTINGTON – The results are in for Cedar Catholic High School’s first two competitions of the 202324 robotics season.

The Cedar Bots traveled on Nov. 11 from Hartington to Norfolk with three teams to take on this year’s FIRST Tech Challenge, titled “CENTERSTAGE.”

“Hexagonal game pieces will be placed in proper locations and stacked on a vertical game board with different point values depending on the color and arrangement of the game pieces,” said science instructor Lowell Brown, the primary mentor for the Cedar Bots. “The game also requires a lifting of the machine in the final seconds of the game similar to doing a pull-up.”

One of the Cedar Catholic teams was made up of senior Gavin Joachimsen, senior Paul Kleinschmit and junior Brett Stevens, who finished with three wins and three losses on the day to place 11th out of 24 teams.

“They actually did better than the record displays due to a huge mistake by their partner team in a match,” Brown said.

Another team of Cedar Bots consisted of junior Nicholas Coleman and freshman Will Steffen, who finished in 14th place.

These students restructured their entire hexagon pickup device during the week following the Norfolk competition and installed “autonomous program coding for the machine (to) improve competition success,” Brown said.

The third Cedar Catholic team featured junior Christian Fiscus, junior Braeden Kleinschmit and sophomore Nolan Heimes, who placed 18th.

These students installed a complete bank of autonomous program coding for their machine and developed “a mechanism in order to achieve more speed with their machine,” Brown said.

The Cedar Bots will keep learning as the season continues, he said.

“Overall, it was a successful day for everyone and a better understanding of the game requirements was gathered by all the team members,” Brown said.

Cedar Catholic competed on Nov. 18 in Sioux City, Iowa, with three teams.

The Cedar Bots team of Joachimsen, Paul Kleinschmit and Stevens finished with four wins and two losses on the day to place seventh out of 26 teams.

Another Cedar Catholic team, featuring Fiscus and Braeden Kleinschmit, recorded four wins and two losses for an 11th-place finish.

The third Cedar Bots team consisted of Coleman and sophomore Ryan Lammers. They ended up with three wins and three losses and placed 13th.

Cedar Catholic’s next scheduled competition is on Dec. 16 in Hinton, Iowa.