ISU inspires high school students with state robotics competition
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POCATELLO — Robots rolled on the Idaho State University campus, controlled by high school students competing in what they’re passionate about.
ISU hosted the State VEX Robotics Competition on Friday. Students put months of work to the test by competing against each other with robots they built as a team.
“We see these students out there (and) they’ve dedicated so much time and effort. It’s really refreshing and very gratifying to see them be successful,” said Alexis Villagran, President of the ISU Robotics Club.
VEX Robotics, a company that sells educational robotics kits, holds the competition, and ISU hosts the state tournament every year.
Villagran said that ISU sees incredible robots built by the students every year.
“We’ve seen some really crazy robots,” he said. “Everybody has a chance of competing. It doesn’t matter your skill level. If you have imagination and you want to program robots, you can compete.”
David Rodriguez, a 16-year-old junior at Vallivue High School, and his team joined the school’s robotics program last year.
“It was fun to be able to bond with people by building, coding, and just playing the game and just messing around,” Rodriguez said.
Then they found out they could compete against other teams.
“We were like, ‘Heck yes, we’re in,'” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said that he was the team’s strategist while building the robot. He would also fill in wherever he needed to, so he did building and coding, too.
He felt the biggest challenge they had to overcome in building the robot was getting the right materials.
“We were just going off scraps in the beginning,” Rodriguez said. “We took a lot of time just trying to study and make sure that we had what we needed.”
Taegen Lovell is a 15-year-old Sophomore at Rigby High School. This is his second year competing. His team had already qualified for nationals before the state tournament because they won a tournament at Madison High School.
Lovell, one of the leading builders on his team, said that he’s learned about the design process preparing for the competition.
“You get an idea, you make the prototype and then you work on the final version and the prototype works,” he explained.
Lovell said he’s also learned to work better with a team over his two years of competing.
Villagran spoke to the quality of ISU’s robotics program. The College of Technology offers multiple degrees in robotics-related fields and admits only 32 students each year.
“It’s challenging, yes, but it’s also a lot of fun. The instructors are great. They’re all super friendly, and they want you to succeed,” Villagran said.
He said that some of the college’s instructors were at the competition, talking to the high schoolers as prospective college students.
Villagran hopes that the students who compete at the state tournament will look at ISU as a potential option for their future.
While Lovell is considering attending Brigham Young University for his undergraduate degree and Utah State for his master’s, Rodriguez wants to attend ISU.
Both Rodriguez and Lovell want to work with robots in the future.
“I like making stuff to perform tasks more efficiently. Efficiency is nice,” Lovell said.
“I just really love building robots and just being able to make my own things,” Rodriguez said.