2019 Bellarmine VEX Tournament
A Brief Summary
This past weekend, we hosted the Bellarmine Bay Area VEX Tournament, an annually hosted tournament hosted by Team 254’s VEX Program. We had five of our VEX Teams (254B, 254D, 254F, 254W, 254X) compete in the tournament. Congrats to VEX Team 315K Paradigm and VEX Team 3324V Supernovas-Fusion for winning the tournament! We would also like to shoutout VEX Team 3324V for winning the Robot Skills section of the tournament and VEX Teams 95070A Redwood Robotics and 315K Paradigm for winning the Excellence Award.
Event Summary and Highlights
General Summary
Overall, the tournament ran smoothly, we had no major hiccups throughout the event and everyone seemed to have had a great time. Our teams saw varying success, as our VEX teams D, W and F made it to eliminations. This event had many firsts for Bell Vex History, to mention a few, this was the first to have a Bell Vex Logo, and the first to have live scoring.
Robot Performance
254B
Throughout the tournament 254B was struggling with many issues. Most of the issues stemmed from connection and software issues. The robot’s hardware performed well, but not being able to control the hardware lead to this team’s demise. Unfortunately, this team placed last in the tournament. But, it was a great learning experience for the team.
254D
This team was also struggling with various software issues, their automatic positioning system was not working according to plan, leaving them to recreate their autonomous routes throughout the tournament. They were also having trouble getting their massive tray to deploy properly. Ultimately, they ended up near the bottom of the rankings. Because of their past success, 254W chose to pick them as their alliance partner, but lost in the round of 16.
254F
During the qualification matches, the robot performed really well, we were able to slow down the other teams with our very defensive robot. The six motor drive base really helped us push through all the cubes and defend very effectively. Our new and improved arm allowed us to be the fastest team at scoring cubes into the towers while also being able to stack cubes reasonably quickly. We ended up ranked in 7th place and we made it all the way to semifinals.
254W
This team had won 4 of 6 qualification rounds and placed in 20th after qualification rounds. Their new intake design was not working according to plan, causing them to focus on tower control instead of their designed purpose, cube stacking. Fortunately this worked out for their benefit, this team became ranked 23th and decided to choose 254D as their alliance partner. They then lost in the round of 16.
254X
Throughout qualification matches this robot struggled quite a bit. Resulting in 2 wins and 4 losses, this team placed in 45. They had issues stemming from their lift and intake. These issues resulted in slow intake speed and an inability to score very quickly or in high quantities.
A Special Thanks
At Bell Vex, we would not have been able to be so successful without the amazing teams that attended the tournament. We would also like to thank all the volunteers and judges that made this tournament an exciting experience, and all of our mentors, teachers, and parents who helped run the tournament smoothly.
