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Robotics, a Competition

Sydney Barnette, Writer

April 14, 2025

This past weekend, the John Adams Robotics Team took a trip to compete in Lafayette, Indiana. The trip began on Friday, Mar. 21, when the team drove down in the middle of the day to make it to the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds.

The competition began quite early in the morning, around 7:45 a.m. when they left the hotel to head to the fair grounds and get ready. Teams were given about two hours to work on finishing touches on their bot before the opening ceremony and official matches started. Although this year the John Adams team ran into quite a few complications, they were able to get the robot up and running by the time that the rounds had started. Overall, there are typically around 84 matches per competition, where the last few are alliances only.

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The way the competitions work is that all teams compete to earn a ranking based off of how many matches they won and how many points they scored. At the end of all the placement matches, the top eight teams choose alliances with two other teams to compete in the final playoffs against each other. Even though place doesn’t necessarily matter, it pays off to be higher so teams are more likely to choose you for alliance.

At events like these, it is super common for teams to go around and do something called “scouting” where they walk around and try to make friends on other teams, as well as find out what their robot does. While scouting, it is also often that more experienced teams go and help out newer teams with building, altering or brainstorming. This past competition, the John Adams Robotics team got a lot of help from a well known and experienced team called Maverick Robotics from Tippecanoe County in Lafayette, Indiana. Not only did they help configure new, longer CAM cables to get their elevator able to work, they also kept coming back to check on them to make sure they had all the tools they needed to succeed.

Kindness, professionalism and patience are highly valued at these competitions as it is more about learning and friendship than actually winning, even though winning is pretty nice.

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About the Contributor

Sydney Barnette, Writer

Sydney Barnette, a creative and friendly senior here at Adams, is happy to finish off their final year as a writer with The Tower, and hopes to go to a school for Marine Biology. Marine organisms have always been a big interest in her life and she hopes to pursue them in the future. Sydney likes to play music; She plays piano, violin and ukulele and loves to perform, playing a lot of classical music with her violin and piano, but enjoys listening to more rock, metal and punk. Some of Sydney’s favorite bands include Mortician, Skindred, Kate Bush, David Bowie, Metallica, Destroy boys and Specimen. She also likes to draw and crochet different cool things such as hats, sweaters and plushies. Sydney has a passion for fashion and you will often see her wearing some pretty cool outfits. Sydney is very outgoing and very friendly, and has lots of friends and family to hang out with. Another thing Sydney is passionate about is Entomology, or the study of bugs; mainly Isopods, Weevils and arachnids though. She likes to listen to true crime podcasts and look into the psychology behind famous cases. Along with drawing and crocheting, Sydney also loves to write stories. Ranging from Horror and thriller to sci-fi and romance, she loves to write about it all. This year Sydney wants to write about different interests she has and information on new media she consumes. In the articles she writes, she wants to include a little weekly bug fact or fish fact to educate people about how cool and awesome those little critters are. So look out for some silly facts! If you see Sydney in the hallways, don’t be afraid to talk to her! She’s always open to new friends and loves to talk to people!