TCS robotics team, Lightning Blue Lizards, took 4th place and Teamwork Award at the VexRobotics competition at  Escuela de Ingeniería on November 9.

The champion earned a place at the Robotics World Cup held in Miami in March 2020. The School’s team went through a series of courses that needed a variety of skills such as the efficiency at the time of grabbing the objects that left the team short on points. 

“There were some really hard courses, others very easy. The hardest course was number three, it was really hard as there were a lot of obstacles we did not take into account,” Gabriel Medina, Grade 9, said.

From the participant’s point of view, the competition was well organized, fair and enjoyable. Even though the school did not win their place on the Robotics World Cup, team member Gabriel Medina really enjoyed his experience at the competition. 

“Was really exciting, well prepared, there were a bunch of teams with a bunch of potentials,” Gabriel said.

The competition had teams from all around Colombia. Julian Zuñiga, Robotics team manager, felt glad about their placement in the competition since they had complicated opponents as the Bucaramanga team.

“The competition went really well. We had one team with 7 students and got to classify to the finals. At the end we finished in 4th place; there were two very good teams from Bucaramanga,” Zuñiga said.

Some teams such as representatives from Bucaramanga were the fair champions of the tournament, as said by many of the TCS team members. The  Bucaramanga teams did their best at the obstacle courses. 

“They actually deserved to be 1st, they showed they quality at their best in every course” Julian Said. 

Zuñiga considers they were a little unlucky, as the alliances they got to be with were not the best. These alliances were all random and each had its pros and cons. They did not benefit the team enough.

“The hardest thing was the actual competition, sometimes it was randomly alliances, and sometimes you did not get the best alliance,” Zuñiga said.

TCS robotics team members thought the competition would be easier than expected. Even Though the team needs to improve in a number of areas, the TCS team represented the school at a high level.

“Most of us learned that even though we feel prepared, we are not, we need to give our best even if we think we are the best at it already,” Medina said.