Batavia team places first in robotics competition

Tim Gietl didn’t know what to expect Saturday when his team of fellow eighth-graders from Rotolo Middle School in Batavia entered its first Great Lakes Midwest Illinois VEX Regional Championship.

“We were thinking maybe we’d be in last place,” Gietl said of the robotics design and skills competition for those in the division for grades 8 through 10.

Gietl and his “Skills that Killz” teammates — Josh Vilchuck, Eric Yingst and Bennett Bernardoni — surprised themselves by being part of a team alliance that captured first place in the competition staged in a crowded Rotolo Middle School gymnasium.

The victory allows “Skills that Killz,” a Fox Valley and Batavia Robotics sponsored team, to advance to the World Championships in April in Orlando, Fla.

Thirty-three teams from throughout the Midwest competed in the event at Rotolo, and after six hours of skills competition, the top eight teams were awarded seeding placement that allowed them to pick two other teams to be part of an “alliance” group in the finals.

All four of the Fox Valley Robotics teams in competition for coach Ron Karabowicz, also the event organizer, reached the semifinals with their alliance groups.

The competition, in which robots operated by hand-held devices attempt to secure plastic rings and place them on either low or high poles to garner points, called for well-oiled robots, wise controllers and sound team strategies.

“You have to have an idea of what is going on with the overall score and what the other robot is doing (either trying to score points, or take points away from the other team by knocking its rings off the poles),” said Joshua Lindoo, a junior at Aurora Christian and a member of the Apex team for Fox Valley Robotics. “When you see something happening, you have to have a strategy for that situation.”

In addition to having a mental plan in place for the actual competition, there was plenty of brainpower at work in the “pit” area — actually the Rotolo lunchroom area — where tables were covered with the team’s robots, electronic equipment and tools for quick tuneups or fixes.

“Our robot’s motor was overheating in the skills challenges, so we have to figure out how to cool it down and get it ready,” said Ryan Newendyke, a freshman at West Aurora High School and member of the “Work in Progress” team for Fox Valley Robotics.

“I was up until 5 a.m. getting the robot ready,” said Newendyke, who said his team worked on the unit for two months in school.

The competition calls for competitors to build a robot using a Vex Robotics Design System kit, and the teams design, build, test and trouble-shoot the robot from months before the “Round Up” competition — or the placing of plastic rings on any of nine moveable posts on a 12-foot-by-12-foot field.

“Skills that Killz” was in an alliance with two teams from Neenah, Wis., and faced another Fox Valley Robotics team, “License to Vex” with its two alliance teams, also from Neenah, in the final match.

“License to Vex” team members — Nick Coussens, Casey Gravelle and Chris Billing, all juniors at Batavia High School — dressed for the occasion by donning tuxedos for the final rounds of the competition.

“There are a lot of problems that can occur with the robot, probably more than you could list in an entire article,” Gravelle said. “A lot of the problems we can fix, but there are others in which you never really know if you fixed it or not.”

Batavia Robotics is a nonprofit organization that began in 2002. Five years later, the name of Fox Valley Robotics was incorporated to offer the program to more local communities.

Fox Valley Robotics currently has more than 60 students 12 and older who participate in three divisions of robotics.