Written By: Lillian Pereira

While the RCDS robotics team,Vex Robotics Competition (VRC) Team, didn’t reach the level of performance they wished for in their recent competitions, they are preparing for a better performance in their next competition. 

Vex competitions are simple on paper; two teams of two alliances compete against each other in a chosen type of robot battle, which changes every year. As stated by faculty advisor Darien Cruté, this year’s game is called Push Back, and is “fast, strategic, and demands both execution and adaptability: alliances score blocks in goals, control zones, clear loaders, park at the end, and try to earn bonuses through autonomous performance.” For a game like this, schools will often build multiple bots; this year, Rye Country Day has three. As Mr. Cruté explained, “each team is responsible for this robot’s design, build quality, wiring, reliability, and strategy.” Out of the team’s three robots, Robot 18963A (Bot A)  is captained by Xindi Liu ‘26, Robot 18963B (Bot B), is led by Charles Iwanski ‘26; and Robot 1869C (Bot C)’s leader is Michael Goneos ‘27. 

This year, the team’s captains knew they needed to implement a more defensive stance in their competitions. “The way this year’s match is played has a lot of defense”, said Captain Jason Ren ‘26. “So, having a driver who’s really familiar with controls and how the bot works is pretty important for match play.” Unfortunately, according to Ren, familiarity with the bot was not considered early by the team. “We didn’t give a lot of time for the driver to practice and for the programmer to make autonomous runs,” Ren commented. Therefore, they did not achieve the performance that they wished for. Out of the three bots that RCDS brought to the Mount Academy Push Back Qualifier, Bot A placed 19th, Bot B finished 18th, and Bot C came in 34th. However, in terms of Skills Challenges, which are unrelated to the main event, RCDS placed 13th, 18th, and and 16th respectively, leading to Mr. Crute to joke “Top half in skills, competitive in quals, and eliminated early… which means we are not far off. We’re basically one ‘drive team montage’ away from making people nervous.” And indeed, it seems like the team is currently in their “drive team montage,” as preparation is underway for their next match; the JFK Qualifiers on January 24th. “We just need to practice, practice, practice,” explained Liu. “Other than that, I think we’re pretty well prepared.” Indeed, if this team keeps on practicing, with a little bit of elbow grease, it may not be long before this team’s bots will be raising their winning trophy in the air.