Immokalee High team takes on the world in robotics event in Louisville

Worlds collided like slabs of metal in a robotics rink as Immokalee High School competed alongside teams from Kazakhstan to New Zealand under one roof at the 10th annual VEX Robotics World Championship.

The Kentucky Exposition Center, where matches ended Saturday in Louisville, transformed into an Olympic Village as 1,400 teams from 30 countries and 50 states decorated their booths with cultural memorabilia.

One team from Chengdu, China, lined their table with emerald bamboo shoots, while the booth directly facing them, a team from Muskogee, Oklahoma, went with a hunting theme, covering their walls in a forest green camouflage print and rubber mallard ducks.

A few rows over, sandwiched between teams from Urumqi, China, and Carrolton, Georgia, two teams from Immokalee hovered over their metal creations, prodding them with Allen wrenches and air compressors.

The robots under operation, named Dragonzord and Megazord, were the brainchildren of a group of seven Immokalee students and their coach Fred Rimmler.

“Being from Immokalee, you don’t really get to meet that many different people,” said Dragonzord captain Kristian Trevino, 18. “To meet everybody from around the world, it’s amazing. I think it’s great.”

Kristian and his teammates spent countless hours after school and on weekends since September assembling and reassembling their robots out of nut and bolts, motors, rubber bands and electrical wiring.

The teams qualified for the state championship in Tampa for the first time and arrived at the world competition as underdogs. Immokalee’s robotics program is only in its second year, and this was the first year the team competed outside the Collier school district.

“We never thought we’d make it this far in the first place,” said Dragonzord mechanic Isaiah Reyna, 16.

On a 12-foot-square playing field, the bots competed to see how many toy stars and cubes each could throw over to the other side in the allotted two minutes. The robots, driven by a designated team member through a game controller, can gain bonus points for climbing onto a corner post and for driving autonomously.

Team Dragonzord enjoyed a solid run, ending with a ranking of 16 out of 94 in their division after winning seven of their 10 qualifying matches. But the results were just low enough to deter the highest-ranking teams from selecting them as allies for the division finals.

“Nobody knew where Immokalee was before, but now that we’ve started getting our name out there, we’re considered as one of the best teams in Florida,” Isaiah said.

Megazord didn’t fare quite as well, winning just three of their 10 matches because of an unexplainable chronic malfunction. But the team stayed positive and were grateful for the opportunity to represent their small rural town.

“There’s a lot of rumors that Immokalee’s a bad place. This shows that we actually do stuff here, that maybe we’re not just about agriculture and minorities,” said Megazord mechanic George Herrera-Carrillo, 15.

Though they won’t be bringing home any hardware, the teams appreciated the opportunity to work with roboticists from other countries including Canada and Singapore.

Isaiah and George enjoyed the unique experience of representing the United States in the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremonies Wednesday.

“Everyone was chanting ‘U.S.A.! U.S.A.!’” he said. “There was a lot of excitement and adrenaline going through us.”

Several team members used the occasion to explore their interest in Japanese culture and visited the country’s booth several times. The Japanese team offered them gifts including origami cranes and temporary tattoos with Japanese characters, and the teams added each other on Snapchat and Instagram (a sure sign of the beginning of a teenage friendship in 2017).

“They’re so sweet,” said Dragonzord mechanic Jennifer Villa, 18. “It’s nice to have that camaraderie.”

Jennifer was one of two girls on Immokalee’s teams and took part in the competition’s first “Girl Powered” social, an event aimed at recognizing the intrepid women taking part in a male-dominated field.

“We don’t need an event to tell us we know how to do (robotics), we already know that,” Jennifer said. “I think it was more for the boys, to show that we deserve the same respect that guys get.”

The students weren’t the only ones who enjoyed the experience. Kristian’s parents and three siblings drove 16 hours from Immokalee to join the festivities. His mother, Griselda Trevino, took time away from her job in a tomato packing house to watch her son compete.

The tears began to flow after she watched him annihilate his opponents in the final qualifying match.

“I’m really proud of my son,” she said. “I’m so happy for him.”

Kristian’s father, William Trevino, a surveillance specialist at the Seminole Casino, said though the family doesn’t have a lot of resources, watching his son compete on a global level was too important to miss.

“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said. “Especially for them to go from nothing to something all of a sudden, wow.”

Coach Rimmler said he, too, couldn’t be more proud of the teams’ performance.

“They far exceeded my expectations in every step of the way this year,” he said.

Team Megazord

Damian Gonzalez-Perez

Christopher Rios

George Herrera-Carrillo

Linda Hernandez

Team Dragonzord

Kristian Trevino

Jennifer Villa

Isaiah Reyna