WAHS Robotics Team Takes Top Honors

 The VEX Competitions, presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, tasks teams of students with designing and building a robot to play against other teams from around the world in a game-based engineering challenge. The West Ashley High School Robotics Team participates every year. This year the high school has four teams; 9623A, 9623B, 9623C, and 9623D.
On October 22, the West Ashley High School Robotics Team competed in the Lowcountry VEX Fall Challenge at Palmetto Scholars Academy. While this was the first competition of the season, it served more as a scrimmage since 12 teams competed, four of which were from West Ashley High. The remaining teams came from Goose Creek High School (two teams), Laing Middle School (two teams), and Palmetto Scholars Academy (four teams). WAHS Robotics Team Coach Nick Holmes and his students helped start the robotics program at Laing Middle School; this was their first time participating in a competition.
All four West Ashley High robotics teams came out on top at the Loucountry VEX Fall Challenge. The top four teams from the day’s competitions got to compete in the finals; all four were from West Ashley High School. 9623B and 9623C, which came in 1st place (Tournament Champions), formed an alliance against 9623A and 9623D, which took 2nd place (Runner up to the Tournament Champions).
Next, the West Ashley High School Robotics Team competed in The Cougar Challenge on October 29th at Lady’s Island Middle School in Beaufort, SC. Counting the four teams from West Ashley High, 18 teams participated in this competition. The remaining teams came from Goose Creek High School, Laing Middle School, Spring Valley High School, Royal Live Oaks Academy Charter School, Dutch Fork High School, Bluffton Middle School, and West Ashley Advanced Studies Magnet. The Cougar Challenge marked West Ashley Advanced Studies Magnet’s first time in competition.
The WAHS Robotics Team did very well in this competition as well. 9623D was part of the alliance that took 1st place (Tournament Champions) while 9623A won the Judge’s Award. The West Ashley High School Robotics Team’s robot 9623B was part of the alliance that came in 2nd place (Runner up to the Tournament Champions), won the Programming and Driver’s Skills Challenges, and won the Excellence Award, which is the highest honor given at a robotics competition.
“Winning a robotics competition is much more than finishing in first place,” said WAHS Robotics Team Coach Nicholas Holmes. “The Excellence award is [given] to the team that has a good competitive robot, ranks high on the board for the Skills Challenges, conducts a professional and memorable judge interview, submits a flawless engineering journal, and selflessly helps the other teams at the event who might be a little over their head. I can never be more proud than when one of my teams takes an Excellence Award!”
This season, Holmes and his students decided they wanted to take their love of robotics to local middle schools and help develop robotics programs at any schools interested. So far this year they have worked with David Borque of Laing Middle School and Daniel Parks of West Ashley Advanced Studies Magnet to get robotics programs started at both places. “Myself and my team have been working with [Parks’] students for a couple of months now, working to get an entirely new group of soon-to-be rising freshmen excited about robotics and West Ashley High School,” said Holmes.