The Little Apple Cyborgs robotics team traveled to Cowtown for their first pre-season competition on Oct. 24. The team members hopes to improve and learn for future competitions.

“I went last year and it was both a horrendous failure and a success,” co-vice president Syoma Zharkov, senior, said. “It was a failure in the sense that 11 of our 13 motors fried themselves and we placed horribly but were a success because we learned a lot from other teams and the experience.”

Taking what they learned from last year, Robotics older members hope to teach their newly acquired members about how competitions are typically conducted and what the best way to handle them is.

“I’m not entirely sure what to expect since this is my first year on the team, but I know it’s our pre-season competition, which means it’s a good chance to get some experience before the main season starts,” senior Addie Chandler said.

Robotics is busy at work teaching and preparing for competitions in many ways, from checking for robotic parts to adding to the looks of the robot.

“We’ve been training drivers, briefing new members on what their responsibilities are,” Zharkov said. “We also added a proximity sensor into our robot intake to detect when we have a game piece in it and we incorporated the mechanism so that it looks like our robot has a top hat now.”

This competition is a great way for officers to learn who can handle the pressure.

“I look forward to seeing how new members handle the challenges of competition,” co-vice president, Mason Gish, senior, said.

The team placed 18/42 team total at the competition; they played in eight qualifying games and had two alliances for each game. Robotics had two people controlling a robot at a time and three people on the field helping set up the playing field.

“I met a lot of new people while doing stuff like asking around for parts or setting up the robots on the field,” senior Nutsa Samushia said.