The 2012/2013 VEX Robotics season has officially started in New Zealand, with our first “Sack Attack” scrimmage being held at Owairaka School in Mt Albert on Saturday the 23rd of June. The event was held in conjunction with Gifted Education Awareness Week, which meant that throughout the day there were members of the public coming in to see the robots and how the game worked. The students and volunteers were great at welcoming everyone in and explaining the logistics of VEX to them, and we hope to see new teams coming on board soon because of this. 31 robots from 13 schools around the North Island of New Zealand participated in the competition, playing six qualification matches each during the day. Two teams from AURA-mentored Lynfield College (2915A and R) finished with no losses on their records during qualifications.
After an exciting set of elimination matches, two finals were played with the first ranked alliance, Lynfield College (2915A) and Otumoetai College (2941A) on red, and the second ranked alliance, comprised of two more Lynfield College teams (2915 C and R) on blue. With very high scores of 295-0 and 145-15, the red alliance came out on top and took away the title of first “Sack Attack” champions of the year. It was fantastic to see a number of new schools joining VEX for the season, along with many new faces within old school teams, and some of these new teams even made it into the elimination rounds – a great start for their first event. Several schools have expanded their teams this year to build more robots for new students to work on, with many teams now running three to eight robots at a time. There was a lot of cooperation between teams to help these new students and get them playing as well as they could, and it was great to see more experienced schools working with the new groups on their building and programming, teaching them what they need to know to have a successful season. All in all, the competition was of a very high standard for an event this early in the season and will only get better as the year progresses. Some very innovative designs have already popped up, and I’m sure there are a lot more to see as the rest of the New Zealand schools get involved again. Our thanks to all the Kiwibots volunteers on the day for making the event run smoothly, and to everyone at Owairaka School involved in hosting the event for providing a terrific venue for the competition.