Clarkston High School’s robotics team Team RUSH 27 is heading to St. Louis Missouri this week for the World Championship after being medaled State Champions on April 16 in Grand Rapids.
Out of 411 teams in the state, RUSH was one of 102 teams at the state tournament. They were seeded No. 2 going into the elimination rounds and brought home the win with a 18-4-0 record on the day.
“I can’t tell you how proud of I am of this team,” said Team RUSH Coach Kyle Hughes. “From the students scouting in the stands to get us the accurate data of the next round of winners who we’d be playing to the pit crew who kept the robot in pristine condition and improving the entire time through the playoffs, to the Drive Team, that just blew my mind.”
For RUSH Drive Team member Jared Harper, heading in the finals was an “amazing feeling.”
“I just look up into the stands and I see 102 teams are up there and they’re watching us – some of them rooting for us, some of them rooting against us,” he said. “But when you look at our team and see them cheering us on, you want to win it for them. That’s what you want. I looked at all of their faces and said ‘we got to win this.’”
In the finals match, RUSH made an alliance with The HOT Team 67 from Highland and The Fighting Pi 1718 who faced off against the alliance of Team TORC 2137 of Oxford, Team Strike Zone 5460 of Lapeer and Team Hybrid Hornets 5150 of Flint, where they went best two out of three.
“It was pretty crazy,” said fellow RUSH Drive Team member Zach Peterson “There were a couple of matches that we either lost or were really close to losing because Fighting Pi’s (robot) ended up dying during two matches.”
“During our first finals match, Fighting Pi’s drive train broke, so we brought in the backup robot for the second finals match. Then they went over a defense and their battery became unplugged. That was the problem,” explained Harper. “For the third match they wired it down and made sure it was all good. The third match they played some major defense and were able to help us a lot.”
Cody Hughes said the reality of being first in the state hasn’t really hit him yet.
“It was after the third match and we all kind of stood there under the scoreboard and holding hands and I kind of realized at that moment this could either put us as champs or be forgotten,” Cody said. “When it came up and showed that we won, honestly it was just a weird feeling.”
Just because they’re number one in the state, Harper noted that it will not change the way they prepare for the upcoming tournament.
“We still have our drive practice, we’re still going to work on different things,” he said. “The more matches that we have the more we learn that we need to work on.”
On the Pit Crew side of things, Chris Heilman things were pretty smooth during States.
“The first half of the day, the robot was all good,” he said. “During our qualification match and elimination there were a few problems but nothing major.”
Heilman said he’s proud to see their hard work pay off.
“Some of us have put in over 300 hours, just ourselves,” he said. We come in 3 p.m. – 9 p.m. most school nights and even come in on Sundays sometimes.”
Fellow Pit Crew member Ben Halcrow agreed.
“Right now we’re the number one team in Michigan and that’s been pretty awesome,” he said.
“For me it’s really good to hear other teams say, ‘hey it’s a really cool robot,’ added Damon Rothrock. “And being able to see our machine out there on the field performing well and say ‘hey, we built that, we put time into that and that’s what we own.’”
Because of the data that they had on the opposing alliance Scout Captain Diana Marsala said she wasn’t too nervous in the beginning.
“For most of the octo-finals, quarter finals, semi-finals I wasn’t really stressed, but when we got to those final matches it was extreme roller coaster,” she said.
Scout Captain in training, Alyssa Dubre, agreed.
“Overall I thought we were going to do well, up until the end where it was a little iffy,” Dubre said. “But I was sure we’d pull it out.”
Marsala said having another state win under their belt is great. They had won state’s two years ago when she was a sophomore.
“There are amazing teams in Michigan, we’re extremely proud that we are ranked first right now,” she added. “Hopefully we can win it for Michigan this year and go to our first trip to Einstein.”
Einstein she explained is the final rounds of playoffs.
Einstein is the best of the best, the last eight teams (out of 600) they battle it out,” she said. The winner of the Einstein field is winner of the world championship.”
Kyle said when her family moved here about 10 years ago their goal was “to put Clarkston on the map for robotics.”
“We’ve done it in Michigan and we’ve done it worldwide. It’s pretty exciting,” Kyle said. “I really hope we bring back the world championship to Clarkston and if we do, I want a parade… I hope a crowd meets us at Depot Park at 6 a.m. in the morning when we arrive home.”