To say that the Fountain Hills High School Vex Robotics Club is doing well this season would be something of an understatement. Not only have they brought home numerous event trophies throughout the past several months but, after this weekend’s state tournament, they’ve now been crowned Arizona’s champions.

Out of the nine tournaments these students have taken part in this season, the group has won top honors at six, not to mention a large number of awards for design, driving, programming and overall performance.

Students participating in the group this year include Dylan Northern, Cameron Ferma, Olivia Lagnese, Christian McErlean, Andrew Cooper and Alex Day. Together, they make up The Third Wave.

The Third Wave recently brought home their biggest accolade of the season after winning the state championship.

So, how does a robotics season unfold, exactly? At state each year, students are informed what the competition for the upcoming school year will entail. From that point on, students can begin work on their next robot, which will be used in the following school year’s competitions.

This year’s competition, for instance, required a robot that could pull off several primary functions. It needed to move large and small objects from one side of an arena to the other, it needed to be able to place those objects inside or on top of two-foot vertical tubes to score additional points, it needed to come in at under a certain height in order to traverse the arena, and it needed to be able to reach up to a bar, hook on, pull itself up and hang there.

The Third Wave had quite a few months to put their robot together and managed to build a contraption that can pull off all of those tasks. It wasn’t perfect in the beginning, and the team said that they’re always looking to improve.

“We try to change our robot after each competition and fix things we notice aren’t quite working correctly,” Northern said.

“We’re always fine-tuning it and we always make sure to maintain it,” Ferma added.

In regular competitions, teams take part in solo preliminaries, trying to score as many points as possible with their robots. Eventually, they have to team up with another squad in hopes of earning top rankings in elimination rounds, which is exactly where The Third Wave finds itself.

“Design was actually pretty tricky this year,” Ferma said.

“There are three drastically different goals that you need to accomplish in this game. Having a robot that can do all three is kind of difficult.”

Lagnese said that the process to achieve these goals is one of trial and error, one in which you “do something, try to improve on that something, and repeat.”

Everyone in the group is a senior except for Cooper and, according to Northern, it’s been a fun few years of crafting ideas, making each other’s ideas better, then building something that they could take full ownership of.

Unlike many robotics clubs around the state, The Third Wave’s advisor, Dr. Paul McElligott, stays as hands off as possible, encouraging his students to achieve their own goals.

“My favorite part has always been designing the robot and getting to work on it throughout the season,” Northern said.

Ferma said he’s also a fan of the design process, but it was a fringe benefit of joining the robotics club that caught him off guard.

“It has a nice social aspect to it,” he said.

“I’ve never been a very social person. So being on a team with these people has been nice. We’ve also met a lot of people through competitions, other teams and individuals that we can see as a friend sometimes, and also an enemy. Also, it’s robots, man. What’s not to like?”

Ferma contributed the team’s success to good leadership, including Dr. McElligott, Dylan Northern and Olivia Lagnese, who serves as project manager.

“We’ve also got a lot of experience,” Lagnese added.

“When we first started, we really didn’t do very well. We had a robot that barely ran and barely held itself together.”

“But that was in our first year,” Northern continued.

“In our second year we lost the first competition, won the second, and then we’ve only lost two competitions since then in three years. So we’re doing well.”

Over the weekend The Third Wave participated in the Vex State Competition hosted out of ASU. There were 50 teams from around the state represented at the competition with a trip to World riding on a top-six finish.

“Fountain Hills had four teams that competed, more than any school there,” said Dr. McElligott.

After 65 qualifying round, Fountain Hills was in third place behind Cave Creek’s Team Automata and The Lemon Bots. The Third Wave came in first in programming skills, determined during the qualifying rounds.

Two Fountain Hills teams competed in the final alliance round, including The Third Wave and team 1471 B, comprised of Wyatt Carlowe and Cameron Ribail. In the end, The Third Wave was allied with the Lemon Bots and Team Automata and, together, they cruised to a first place finish.

“Fountain Hills earned two invitations and two awards as the champion and winner of skills,” McElligott added.

“Fountain Hills will be heading to the World Vex Competition.”

The Third Wave competed in the World competition the past two years but, even with that amount of experience, Ferma said that it’s going to be a tough competition.

“It’s still really stressful,” he said.

“There are a lot of really good teams competing.”

Northern explained that 400 teams compete from all over the world at this final competition of the season, about 250 of which come from the United States. This year’s competition will be hosted out of Anaheim, April 23-26.

The team says they’re ready to compete and, once again, they’re hoping to bring home some additional hardware.