Deer Lakes BotsIQ team makes history as finalists in competition

The Deer Lakes BotsIQ team placed 2nd out of 67 teams at the BotsIQ Finals competition. The team has been building momentum in recent years with more students joining the team and several members gaining years of experience. The team placed 4th last year and named this year’s bot “Sam Tristani,” paying homage to last year’s senior driver and vowing to build on previous success.

“We did the best in school history, just leaps and bounds from where we were four years ago when I first joined the team,” Deer Lakes senior Declan Mass said. “We were a middle of the pack team that placed in the 30s. Over the years, we’ve had many developmental improvements. We owe a lot to (our advisors) for getting us to this point.”

Declan pointed to the team’s weapon design, electrical management and drivability as the most improved areas over the last four years.

Deer Lakes was victorious in early rounds against Greene County CTC, Clairton, Penns Valley, Punxsutawney and Eastern Westmoreland CTC.

“It was really amazing, especially because we worked so well together in the pit as one team,” Deer Lakes senior Dom Miller said. “We made fixes to anything that would get somewhat broken and quickly be ready for the next match.”

Their last victory was in the semifinals against Chambersburg Area, a match that went to a judge’s decision, which is a rarity in BotsIQ.

“Our bot had better control than theirs did,” Declan, who drove the Deer Lakes bot, said. “We were able to drive our bot upside down, which is the first year we’ve consistently had a bot that successfully drove upside down without much trouble.”

Deer Lakes’ bid for a championship run came to an end in the finals against Bedford.

“It meant a heck of a lot to get into the finals given the number of hours we put into it after school building it, working on technology and documenting everything,” Deer Lakes senior Logan Goldsmith
said. “To know that it paid off with great results, it’s a very good feeling. It was an awesome experience.”

The BotsIQ team worked for several months to build a bot with the right combination of size, speed and security and tapped into ingenuity to make the bots internal mechanisms more protected.

“There were times during our preliminaries in March when our motors were cutting in and out,” Logan said. “We discovered wires were being pulled from their connector sockets. When we looked at that, it was easy to improve upon. It wasn’t until our last match that our drive motor got pulled out of the gear box. That’s just something you can’t help in the middle of a match. Given everything we put into it, almost everything went as well as it could have gone.”

The BotsIQ team included Dom Miller, Logan Goldsmith, Jacob Niederst, Declan Mass, Alex Niederst and Luke Maggi.