Claremore Junior High 31st in the world | News

The Claremore Junior High Robotics team came in 31st out of more than 800 teams from across the world at the VEX World Championships last month.

Team members Allison Dohrer, Abigail Johnston, Elijah Ledbetter and Kynden Stone, all 12 and 13 years old, qualified for worlds with their robot 8634C “Apollo” by winning the Excellence Award in Robotics at the state TSA competition earlier this year.

They were one of only three junior high robotics teams representing Oklahoma on the world stage.

“They do all of the work themselves,” Robotics Instructor David Isenbart said of his students. “They program it themselves. They design it themselves. And they build it themselves. All of it is done by students.”

“This was the first time a team from Will Rogers Junior High has qualified for worlds,” Isenbart said. “They were up against teams from China, Japan, Taiwan, Germany, South America. There were small countries that had two competitors and one robot and great big countries like the United States that had hundreds of competitors.”

Upon arriving in Louisville, Kentucky, the children played 11 games over four days in the hopes of qualifying for the final world tournament.

It started out rough.

On day one the team was 0-3.

“At that time I though it was going to be a long four days,” Isenbart said.

Admittedly a little disheartened, the kids set to work thinking through how their robot fell short and finding ways to make improvements.

Day two, 1-1-1.

Still not satisfied, they got back to work and made even more changes to their robot.

“That’s what robotics is all about,” Isenbart said. “Problem solving, trying to fix what is not right, seeing what you can make better.”

“With anything you do in life you have to be able to figure it out and then adapt,” Isenbart said. “Sometimes I feel like I throw them out to the wolves, but those are the people you will want to hire. When you’re looking for someone who is going to take care of business, that’s who you want.”

In the five games that took place over the next two days, the kids went 5-0.

“They finished 6-4-1, which was pretty good,” Isenbart said. “But had they done a little more in the beginning, they might have been one of those teams in the tournament at the end.”

That is a sample of the tough love, ‘no such thing as good enough’ attitude that Isenbart has always used to motivate his students.

“Around here they just competed and beat everybody, and that was not making them better,” Isenbart said. “When they got there and they realized how bad they were compared to teams that were super awesome, they started making changes so they could be one of those teams.”

“The experience for these students was great,” he said. “They understand now what it takes when you are going up against the best of the best.”

At the end of the qualifying rounds, the top 16 teams each get to choose a partner to take with them into the world tournament. In 31st place, 8634C was a good contender, but was not chosen to continue.

However, the team did stay to watch. They were in the stadium cheering as the final four were broadcast live on ESPN.

“To finish as well as we did, that was a big deal,” Isenbart said.

Building on their experience, the team’s goal for next year is to score even better in the qualifying rounds and make it into the world tournament.

“We’re committed to being better next year than we were this year,” Isenbart said. “You’re either going up or you are going down, and we want to keep going up.”