During the weekend of 22-24 March the CBHS robotics team attended the 2018-19 Nationals held at Glenfield College in Auckland.

This is the first time in four years that CBHS had entered a team in the Nationals. The students involved were Rio Ogino, Max Young, Zach Schurr, Hugo Marshall and James Lucas. The Vex Robotics Competition is the largest robotics competition in the world, involving over 20,000 teams from more than 40 countries.

The CBHS team was one of five teams representing the South Island and their robot was the culmination of seven months, design, testing and programming. This year’s game was called Turning Point and objectives included toggling flags by firing balls, flipping caps and by centre parking robots on platforms. The game starts with a fifteen (15) second autonomous period, followed by a one minute and forty-five second (1:45) driver-controlled period so the students must learn to programme their robot and drive it successfully while working collaboratively with another team or alliance.

The New Zealand Nationals involved 60 teams made up of 400 students and the scrimmages took place over two full days. After the first day, the CBHS team was placed 4th overall and we were the top team from the South Island. On finals day, we moved through to the quarter finals but were knocked out by stiff competition. The atmosphere was electric, with hundreds of young people racing to repair, alter and enhance their robots with the goal of being selected to represent New Zealand in Vex Worlds, held in April every year.

Although CBHS did not achieve this goal, we were placed 21st out of the 60 teams, second only to the St. Andrew’s College team out of the South Island representatives. The team were happy with the result and had learnt a great deal from the experience. They are looking forward to returning to the Nationals in 2020.