Belmont Robotics team wins 'Amaze Award' at state competition

BELMONT — The robotics program at Belmont High School has been quietly growing over the past several years, and this year hit a high point. After the statewide competition last month in Manchester, the Raiders robotics team will be known as one to be reckoned with.

“We had three teams in states; they all did well. This is by far our strongest showing at states,” said Adrien Deshaies, Belmont High School teacher and advisor to the school’s robotics club. That strong showing included the team of Konnor Blake and Kyle Whitcomb, whose robot advanced to the semifinal round and earned a judges’ favorite award.

The team of Whitcomb and Blake is something of an unusual success, because both were new to robotics this school year.

Whitcomb, who runs track and plays soccer, said he signed up for Deshaies’ robotics class in the fall based on word-of-mouth recommendations.

“Some of my friends last year said it was a really good class,” said Whitcomb, a sophomore.

For Blake, a senior, his involvement was even more circumstantial. “I needed a credit,” he said, and the robotics fit easily into his schedule.

Deshaies said the two didn’t act like students who were just looking for a credit.

“They took off with it, spent a lot of time after school, continued to work [on their robot],” Deshaies said. He uses his robotics class as a kind of proving ground: When he sees students such as Blake and Whitcomb spend hours after class on their robot, he invites them to take it to a competition.

Belmont’s robotics program participates in the VEX Robotics Competition and, since 2016, has been host to a regional event at the high school. Regional events give attendees the chance to try out their robots in the game of the year — this past year’s game involved stacking colored disks and firing balls at targets, all while preventing their opponents from doing the same — and qualify for the state competition. For the host schools, it also offers the chance to raise funds for their program.

Whitcomb and Blake didn’t do too well in that competition.

“Our robot wasn’t in its prime,” said Blake. “We definitely learned a lot from it.”

The two teammates had named their robot “Roseanne” and Team Roseanne wasn’t discouraged. Blake stepped away from the winter track schedule to focus on the robot, and Whitcomb joined him for an hour or two after practice in the afternoon. They tweaked their design — Roseanne was a specialized stacker — and worked on their programming.

“It was a fun time. Like every sports team, you get better as the season went on,” Blake said.

At a competition at Pinkerton Academy in early January, Team Roseanne made it into the elimination rounds. Then, at an event in Vermont, they took tournament champions.

At the state championship, they progressed all the way to the semifinal round before being knocked out. They didn’t go away empty-handed, though, as the judges decided that Team Roseanne was worthy of the “Amaze Award,” given to the robot and team that impresses them most.

For the team members, the award was gratifying, especially after the long hours they put in.

“I guess you could call us crazy to spend that much time on it,” said Blake.

“But it was worth it,” added Whitcomb. “I felt great when we won the Amaze Award at the state competition.”

Team Roseanne actually started out with a third member, Jake Deware who, like Blake, joined the class because he was a senior who just needed the credit. Deware decided to split from the team and build his own robot after seeing an intriguing design at their first competition.

Deware plans to pursue the plumbing trade after he graduates, and he found that the robotics competition gave him some useful skills: “Problem solving, different ways to get to your objectives,” he said, such as the moment when one of the four wheels of his robot fell off during the competition, and he found he could still be effective so long as he only drove in reverse.

Deware made it to the quarterfinal round in the state competition, and he may have one more chance to see what his robot can do, as Deshaies is eyeing a 100-team event coming up at Worcester Polytechnic Institute later this month.

“It would be the biggest event that we’ve ever been to,” Deshaies said.