Robotics Team Claims Programming Award at Preseason Competition
Team 1836: The MilkenKnights won the Programming Award at the offseason Beach Blitz FIRST Robotics Competition in Huntington Beach held October 12-14. The award recognized the outstanding autonomous mode, high level control profiles, and various programmatic failsafes that were implemented. Congratulations to the lead programmer Alex Swerdlow ’19!
Fifteen Milken students participated in the preseason event, including four 8th graders. Using the same robot from the regional competitions earlier this year, the team had a largely new drive team. Team captains Yoel Nozar ’19 and Alex Swerdlow ’19 served as Drive Coach and Human Player, respectively; Drew Weisserman ’19 reprised his role as Robot Operator; Mikey Lippman ’21 made his debut as Robot Driver; and Noah Kugell ’20 was Technician/Strategist. Team veterans Sam Lainer ’20, Talia Gandin ’21, and Aaron Neman ’21 provided strong leadership in the pit, helping to mentor the newer members.
The competition game was a modified version of the 2018 FIRST game Power Up, which requires collecting cube milk crates and depositing them into various scoring locations. Finishing with a record of 6-4-0 and earning a ranking of 7th out of 36 teams, it was the team’s best ranking in 2.5 years, and third best ranking ever. They were captains of the 6th seed alliance – selecting the two other teams that made up the alliance – and losing their quarterfinal round to the 3rd seed alliance.
While the six-week build season doesn’t kick off until January 5, the offseason competitions are a great way for the team to practice the skills and disciplines needed for real competition, according to Robotics Manager Stephan Shapiro. New students are able to learn the various aspects of the competition, and Shapiro noted it was the first event for six of the students. All of the students get the chance to try out new roles or improve their proficiency in returning roles. He also explained it is important for them to work on offseason projects to expose any weaknesses that they can improve on. “The competitions are also a lot of fun and help build excitement and motivation going into build season,” Shapiro remarked.
The MilkenKnights are coming off a successful season last year, which included 9th place rankings in both the Arizona and Orange County regionals in March. They ranked above 83% of the 148 teams that they faced in competition, a team best, beating the previous record set in 2010 when they ranked above 68% of the 115 teams faced. This was also the fourth competition in a row that they made the playoffs and were eligible to be alliance captains, another team first.
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