TSA Wins Second Place in Competition

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Last month TSA or the Technology Student Association’s robotics teams won first and second place overall at the VEX competition held in Cy-Fair.

The organizations multiple teams took part in many categories of the competition (essay, debate, etc.), but their most evident achievement was seen in their performance within the robotics portion of the event. This category required its candidates to test the function and efficiency of robots the students had to build ahead of time.

“The robot had to be programmed and built a certain way, and afterwards we had to run it in order to prepare for competition,” senior Dominique Wilburn said.

Robotic team contestants had to create an efficient device capable of completing tasks in an obstacle course or game within one minute three times in a row.

“We are given a game to play and have to build a robot that can play the game, so we design, test and encode the robot ourselves and then simply try to improve upon it,” senior Alfredo Maldonado said. “We then practice with it and at competition we just play the game and see how many points we can get.”

Each team took part in a certain game during the competition and did their best to gain a spot in order to advance to state.

“We determined the minimum amount of points that we needed to beat everyone else was 17 points,” Maldonado said. “Out of the three tries the highest is what your final score is.”

The team may have not placed first, but they were still able to secure a spot for the state competition in Dallas later this April.

“Sadly, Klein got second place overall, but out of everyone in Klein my team got first,” Maldonado said.

TSA’s Robotics team expresses their excitement for state along with the want to perform better in the next competition than they have in their previous one.

“Last year we did not qualify for state, but this year we did and if anything, it means that we’re improving really well,” Maldonado said. “The way that we see it as a team is that we’re basically ready to go to the next level. We’re simply looking forward to improving as a team.”