A Powell-based robotics team reached a global milestone no other Wyoming team has yet been able to achieve.
The PHS robotics team traveled to Casper, Wyoming, on February 7 for their annual state competition, which ran through the 8.
The day was jam-packed with robot trials, presentations of community and notebook work, and multiple wins from each team at Powell High School. To succeed at this level, many teams had to work around the clock.
“There were a lot of challenges,” junior 6437 member Brighton Streeter said. “I think our robot ended up having a lot of disconnection issues. A lot of stuff ended up just being if something goes wrong, you have to find the solution for it.”
Thanks to every team’s perseverance, however, different Powell teams, such as 3189 and its sister team 3188, each took home a state title. Team 3189, consisting of seniors Alan Crawford, Dexter Opps, and Dallin Waite, as well as sophomores Calvin Opps, David Stensing, and Zach Peterson, won the Winning Alliance Captain title and more.
“We performed great,” Crawford said. “My team, 3189, won Inspire, qualifying for Worlds in Houston, the most prestigious award at the competition for our general ability in robot round and outreach. 3189 also won the robot round, qualifying us for worlds again. We went undefeated, never scored less than 200 points, and no other team reached 200. As of February 12, 2025, 3189 is ranked 10th in the world out of over 7000 teams worldwide.”
The massive amount of points 3189 was able to score while on the field helped raise their score to an insurmountable level no other Wyoming-based team has been able to achieve thus far. Being a top ten team is something many teams struggle with, with teams from North America in general even being few and far between on the leaderboard in years past.
Through continuously working on their bot after school on all days of the week, the team was able to persevere past initial struggles and design plans to a ground-breaking bot worthy of the title it’s been recently bestowed.
Team 3188, consisting of seniors Jacob Harms, Isaac Stensing, Ethan M. Cartier, and Luke Legler, along with juniors Mason Coombs, Elias Brower, and Matthew Boyd, as well as sophomore Wesson Warren, won Winning Alliance Partner and 3rd place in Inspire.
“We really had a consistent robot throughout the whole competition and an auto that worked well with [3189],” Coombs said. “They picked us and we won State together, beating the second-place alliance 364-150.”
Other teams, such as 10541, were awarded the Innovate award, which is given to those who created the most prototypes and innovations for their bots throughout the year. They also placed fourth overall.
“We were initially the underdogs,” senior 10541 member Kate Miller said. “We did really bad at Robo Rumble, so we completely redid our whole bot and everything. Our team was able to mesh well together with our alliance pick, and so we came out as the fourth seed Alliance Captain.”
The two other Powell teams, 10731 and 6437, also placed high with 10731 placing third overall in Gameplay, and 6437 receiving the control award. All Powell groups had a reason to celebrate.
“We performed very well,” Streeter said. “I was impressed with the way that we were able to overcome the challenges that we faced at the competition, and ultimately placed third.”
Other members of each squad had similar thoughts about the overall success. 3189, currently 10th in the world, is a special case; no Powell team has ever placed that high with such success.
“Every single Powell team won an award and performed very well,” Crawford said. “I was super impressed with how all the Powell teams performed this season.”
This sentiment was shared by sister team 3188, which reflected on the well-deserved outcome of the competition for the pair of teams.
“It went very well,” Coombs said. “Our robot worked how we designed it, too, and we ended up getting third place in Inspire, which was a massive improvement from not getting any award last year.”
