ABOVE: Robotics competitors from left, Tyler Slama, Wylee Frederiksen and Jacob Kastning take their robot to the competition field at Worlds, where they would go 4-6 in their matches and place 51st in their section. Submitted photo.

FAIRMONT – After a hot start to the season, Fairmont Robotics is looking for a boost at the state competition on May 16 after a Worlds performance that did not meet expectations.

Coach Sam Viesselman said they finished 51st out of their 76-team division, and they were not selected for an alliance spot.

“The challenging thing about worlds is that everybody is so tightly packed, so one or two mistakes can make you drop 10, 15 or 20 ranks. At the same time, we came in and learned so much from the other teams there.”

What was their Achilles heel? Right from the start, Viesselman said their robot threw them for a loop.

“Unfortunately for us, when we loaded in the robot and started running it for the first time after transporting it down, we ran into a bunch of new issues we hadn’t seen before,” he said. “During the event, we spent the majority of our time trying to fix all of those issues.”

Being in a situation where a team has been thrown for such a loop in such a big scenario, Viesselman said what comes after is a balancing act.

“Trying to find what the students who are leading those efforts need to hear to motivate them,” he said. “What they need to calm them down or give them the ability to relax and focus from the last match. When things don’t go right in a match, it’s really easy to have your adrenaline spike and be really fired up, but it’s not always the best mindset to fix the challenging problem.”

Senior student and team captain Illyana Kelley said the results they recieved do not reflect the potential they have.

“This experience was extremely valuable to us,” she said. “It was amazing to go in there and watch these high-level teams compete and learn how they work. It was really nice to see this tough competition too, because at our past two competitions we were dominating it for a while, but it was really nice to have tough competition.”

Heading into the state competition at the Gangelhoff Center in St. Paul’s Concordia University, Kelley said they want to focus on applying everything from Worlds to give it all they have.

“Obviously, you go into it and want to win it,” she said. “To me, I think that it’s very important that we go into it with a mindset of ‘We just competed at the world competition. We really want to apply what we’ve just learned.’ I think we’ve been fixing a lot of our problems, so hopefully we will be able to run smoother and show them we have what it takes to be a world-class team.”

This will also be the last competition for Kelley. For her, it will be a culmination of all her work, and a last hurrah for the hobby that has changed her future.

“I went into robotics my sophomore year when I moved to Fairmont,” she said. “I had not a single clue how to even work a drill. The mentors there, they completely turned that mindset around. When I first joined I wanted to be a cosmetologist. I had dreams of becoming an astronaut and working for NASA, but those dreams were slipping away. As soon as I joined robotics, all the mentors, they made me realize that I am capable of doing the things that I want to do, even if they’re hard.”

She is going to continue her education with a focus on robotics and continue chasing her dreams of NASA.

As for the team as a whole, Viesselman said they’ve already reached a goal by making it to state, and are now looking to show the best performance they possibly can.

“If the robot works as well as in the shop, everything clicks the way we think it’s been clicking, they’re feeling really good about our chances of at least making it into the playoffs, the top 12 teams,” he said. “At the same time, we don’t want to count any we don’t want to count any chickens before they hatch.”

For more information on the state competition, visit mshsl.org/sports-and-activities/robotics.