NEW PALESTINE — The four members of the “Boogie Woogie” New Palestine High School Robotics team were gathered around the work table tweaking their robot for an upcoming competition.
The high school is hosting a massive tournament with 64 teams from around the state, including many of the top teams in Indiana competing from around 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.
Defeating the competition will be a major challenge for the host school as they try to come out on top, but for the three juniors and one sophomore who make up team “Boogie Woogie,” it’s just another chance to put forth their best effort, something this team has done all year, working at a record-setting pace.
In addition to finishing in first place in many competitions so far this season, team “Boogie Woogie” set a world record recently at a contest in Cleveland, Ohio during the skills segment of the competition.
The team is composed of juniors Kendall Steele, Ben Wilson and Chase Shinkle and sophomore Andrew Maple . They were able to score 423 points — two better than the old 421-point world record.
“We were kind of surprised, but we did have a lucky run,” Kendall said. “We had hit some good scores in practice so we knew we could be in the world record range, but no way did we think we were really going to do it. We just didn’t expect that.”
Kendall noted it’s great to work with a good group of classmates who were glad to see such a great payoff for their hard work.
“We’re a very organized team,” Kendall said. “We’re always thinking about the best way to be efficient and get the most out of the effort for our time, and we’re always looking forward to that next competition.”
While the guys, who’ve been working together for a few years now, haven’t officially named their robot, they came up with their team name “Boogie Woogie” on a dare.
“Our freshman year, a senior team was playing this song about letting you boogaloo, and the seniors bet us we wouldn’t use that for a name, so we did it.” Chase said.
Chase said while it’s great to have a world record under their belts, it doesn’t seem real.
“We’re just here to have fun and compete,” Chase said. “We’re all good friends and to think we set a world record, we’re like ‘Dang!’”
During the record setting event, Ben and Andrew were in charge of match loading the green triballs used during the contest. They placed them on the robot to shoot into the field of play. Chase filmed all the practice runs so the team could go back and look at their work and make decisions about what to go for during the actual competition while Kendall controlled the robot — the third bot they built this season.
“We built this one in about five days, and it will be the one we use the rest of the year,” Kendall said.
Dave Post is the lead teacher for the high school’s robotic group and said the NPHS teams this year are all very competitive. Not only is he proud of team “Boogie Woogie,” Post says he’s got four top teams who help make the NPHS Robotics group not only one of the best in the state, but also a competitive team in the nation and world.
“If you look at programs in China and places like Singapore, California and Texas, we’re right up there and legit,” Post said. “We’re the No. 1 team in the state.”
Post noted that’s because the NPHS Robotics group has four teams who have won first place at events and have already qualified for state and the world competition.
“The future is bright here because we only have one senior team,” Post said.
While three of the four “Boogie Woogie” team members say they plan to be engineers, Chase wants to study computer science. No matter which way they go in the future, they’ll always be a part of “Boogie Woogie” the team that set a world record for most points during a skills competition.
“We were obviously pretty excited, but it just didn’t feel real because we were in the middle of competing, so it took us a minute and we were like, ‘Guys, we just set a world record,’” Kendall said. “It was pretty cool.”
