MVHS Green MacHHHHine Wins Division’s Excellence Award

Editor's note: This post is the result of user-generated content. Mountain View Patch encourages readers to send articles, photos and video clips of anything newsworthy, quirky, beautiful, funny or dramatic of happenings in the city. Email them to mountainview@patch.com. This was contributed by Cynthia Greaves.

The MVHS Green MacHHHHine Robotics team won the Excellence Award for its division at Thursday's VEX Robotics Worldwide Championships!

They also finished seventh in the qualifying rounds which allowed them to compete in the quarterfinals.

The competition was held at the Anaheim Convention Center with 700 teams (including middle school and college) from 24 countries participating. The 420 High school teams were divided into five divisions.

The Excellence Award is considered the highest award and a lot of work outside of just building a high performing robot went into it: presentations at elementary schools and community events, a team website, essays, a promotion video, an animation video of a proposed new game, a design notebook maintained throughout the season, judges interviews, and lots of wonderful graphics and logos for the banner, buttons, and T-shirts.

One of the big advantages of Vex Robotics is that it allows for an iterative design process.

The team started working at the beginning of the summer, brainstorming approaches and then continually designed, built, and tested their robot throughout the year. They went to three different tournaments prior to the World Championships which allowed them to learn from their competitors and alliances and continually refine their design.

It was a great learning experience for all concerned. The team is made up of Jack Marquez (MVHS Senior), Barrett Greaves (MVHS Senior), Robbie Kalb (MVHS Junior)—team captain, Hannah Athey (MVHS Sophomore), Timmy Beckmann (Homestead High Junior) and Harrison Tang (homeschooled 8th grader). The team’s website can be found atgreenmachhhhine.com

Mountain View High School will have a new Robotics class offered next school year. We are hoping that several MVHS teams will be represented at next year’s World Championships.