turpinators-headed-to-lego-league-world-competition | Local news

The Turpin Turpinators robotics team stops for a photo after the First LEGO League robotics competition Saturday. The team took overall first place for the day and will be heading to the Worlds competition in April. Courtesy photoELLY GRIMM • Leader & Times

The Turpinators robotics team from Turpin, Okla. was able to annihilate the competition at the First LEGO League robotics competition Saturday, guaranteeing them a spot at the table for the Worlds competition in Houston set to take place in a few weeks. 

According to coach Ryan Buller, however, the team did not start out as the powerhouse it is today. 

“We started four years ago as a 4-H team here in Turpin and when it was being introduced and when they were talking to the students about all the different options, many of them said they were interested in robotics,” Buller said. “And our Extension agent, he’d had some experience because he’d worked with the robotics program in Beaver for several years, and I’d had experience because I had helped with the robotics team in Liberal for a few years. So I knew what the competition would be like and we decided to just go for it.”

That first year, Buller admitted, was not exactly stellar. 

“We were only a rookie team with barely any experience – we all had a lot of fun, but it’s so tough for a rookie team to be fully ready for such a competition,” Buller said. “Then in our second year, we were able to come together and we roared back to win our regional competition and we were able to go to the World Championship Festival. Then last year, we used a lot of that excitement and money we’d raised to expand the robotics program in Turpin tremendously – we added robotics classes to the 2nd grade curriculum, we added access with kindergarteners, and I started helping out even more with teaching the robotics camp at the Mid-America Air Museum. We finished really well last year, but Tyrone ultimately won it all and then this year, we came in really strong and everything came together for us perfectly and we ended up as the overall winner for this year, which I was really excited about.”

And there were nothing but happy feelings Saturday after the Turpinators was announced as the winning team for the day. 

“To be honest I was slightly light-headed, and I was also super excited. It’s a huge accomplishment and with any achievement, when you get to that moment of having it recognized, especially against such good competition like we saw Saturday, it hits you all at once,” Buller said. “It was a great feeling though, and some of our members were crying happy tears in the pictures we took because they were so excited. It was also a bit of a relief because in the weeks leading up to the competition, it’s basically a giant cram session making sure everything is exactly the way it should be and everything works the way it needs to.”

Overall, Buller said, he is very much looking forward to going back to Worlds. 

“Only two current members of my team were on that other Worlds team – we’ve got a bunch of brand-new members and we had a lot of students age out,” Buller said. “So we’ve got a lot of 4th graders and 5th graders on my team right now. I’m really excited for parents to have the chance to see the potential of this program. The competition we’re in is the oldest and largest robotics competition in the world, and there was a story on the competition sometime last year on HBO, and there’s also a movie about it all called ‘Slingshot.’ The inventor of the Segway is the one who put together this competition several years ago, so there’s that pedigree to it. I’m extremely excited for these students and parents to see all the possibilities there are from this program and now that I know more of what to expect from the higher levels, I’m excited to go this year and take another coach with me and be able to soak up all that information and then come back and continue advancing robotics in Turpin. A lot of my vision has been to see all of our small towns participate in this, and our region goes all the way up to Nebraska, so we’ve got a lot of work to do to recruit new teams.”

And with all of that, Buller said, there is much more preparation that will need to happen before the trip to Houston. 

“We’re still coming down from the high of winning, but pretty soon we’ll be having a meeting with the parents and start talking about the trip itself as well as some fundraising that would need to be done, because with the trip to Houston, we’ve only got about three weeks to prepare, and that’s a major undertaking, we’re expecting we’ll have to raise about $9,000 in just that short time,” Buller said. “Then with the team, we’ll need to fine-tune our coding and make sure everything on that end is solid, and there have also been some ideas tossed around for some attachments to the robot, some of which came from inspiration from Saturday. Their project had to do with possibly getting a patent on an idea for snap-in lenses for glasses in space. With our research, we found out a major concern NASA has with long-term space travel is how eyes change because of the pressure differences and how that affects the astronauts. With our project, we were using 3D printing and looking at the possibility of patenting, so we have to fast-forward and see what will need to be done with that, and we’re also working with a pair of local optometrists on that, and we may need to talk to some more experts. Then another part of the competition is Core Values, and that’s basically rules the team works by, like how they treat each other and things like that, and we’ve already got that down pat. We’ll also be working to maybe make our presentation a little tighter and fine-tuning some of those things.”

Buller added he hopes the Worlds competition will be an eye-opening experience for his students. 

“At the competition itself, there’s an estimation of anywhere from 60,000 to 90,000 people there. News agencies from all throughout the world also come to this, like HBO was there a few years ago and ESPN has run some things about this before, so it’ll be worldwide news,” Buller said. “Two years ago it was headline news because a team of girls from Afghanistan and Pakistan were here while the travel ban situation was going on – those girls were at the robotics competition with us and everyone else, and while they were able to be there, there were some key people for them who weren’t able to come because of that situation. So it’s worldwide and it’s a premier elementary school academic competition and our students will need to be ready if a camera comes toward them. Everything will be streamed live on Twitch, so they also have to be ready for that too, and they will meet people from all throughout the world because of the different parts of the competition they are part of, and they’ll also get to see the higher levels of this competition like with the high school divisions, which should give our kids some inspiration too. Ultimately, I would love to see my students continue in some sort of STEM work and then come back to the area and start engineering firms and/or manufacturing firms and help improve the area. Overall, it’s going to be a very memorable trip for us.”

Buller added he hopes to keep expanding robotics in the area. 

“I’ve been one of the biggest evangelists for this program ever since I got involved with it back in 2005 when Liberal got some grants after it started there. I can’t think of another program that can provide so much of a positive impact long-term for a community than this. Its potential hasn’t yet been fully realized, and I know it can be,” Buller said. “MAAM has provided amazing opportunities from the grants originally received by Jim Bert when he was still working there, and we’ve completely realized that and we’re so glad for the work he put in and for helping us realize what all we can do. MAAM has always been an amazing resource for us, and this is always a great opportunity for us and has great benefits for anyone who wants to enter. I want every student who wants to be part of this to have that opportunity. The opportunity is there and I would encourage everyone interested to contact me and I’ll be glad to answer any questions there are.”

Buller also said his team couldn’t have done this alone. 

“Anyone who wants to follow us can visit turpinators.com and we’ll be adding our social media channels so everyone can easily follow what we’re doing,” Buller said. “We consider ourselves ambassadors for the high plains area, so we’re not going in just representing Turpin, we’re there for the whole area and we take that seriously. We want to thank the City of Liberal and MAAM for their help with everything and all the coaches and members who have helped us along the way. And for those who would want to donate to help us with our trip, they will have to contact the Turpin Public Schools because since we are affiliated with them, all money has to go through the school.”