A dozen robotics teams poured their dedication into this year’s league meet, the Center Stage, Nov. 10.

League meets are the precursor to robotics tournaments. To qualify for the tournaments, teams must first secure a spot in the top ten positions of all four league meets.

The upper school sponsors three teams: Robotters, Autonomice, and the newly formed CyBears. The year prior, the Robotters and the Autonomice secured a spot on the state level.

League meets start with each team making small and quick revisions on their robot before each one is checked to see if it meets the stringent standards.

Hosted by the First in Upper Midwest, this year’s league meet was designed for team partnerships, in which each team is given five rounds to compete and are randomly paired with another team for each round.

The challenges encompassed placing pixels (small hexagonal objects) onto a backboard, shooting a paper airplane off the robot, and hanging a robot off the ground from a metal pole.

This year, the challenges were more complicated than past challenges. Sophomore Dia Chaney said, “There are so many components to these challenges, and the pixels are very small and thin which make them hard to pick up.”

Freshman Alex Haupt was nervous going into his first meet. “We had to figure out how to innovate all these engineering problems and create this ramp,” Haupt said, “but it’s really cool.”

His team, The Cybears, finished ninth in the meet.

The Robotters adopted a strategic approach by optimizing their cycles, which involves increasing the scoring of points. Junior Lorenzo Good said, “I think this year our main focus is just dropping a ton of points in the normal season.”

The Robotters placed sixth.

The Autonomice were confident in their design of the paper airplane launcher, and while they did notice some flaws, they were able to place very well in the meet. “I think we did a really good job and a lot better than the first league meet,” Chaney said.

Autonomice finished fourth.