The robotics team at Oak Park and River Forest High School is about to take on the world.

VEX Robotics team 99371B will face off against the best robotics teams in the world at the VEX Robotics World Championship on May 6 through 8 in Dallas, Texas. The team earned their spot at the global competition after being awarded Tournament Champions at the Illinois V5RC HS State Championship on Feb. 28 through March 1.

The team, named Electrical Dysfunction, consists of seniors Lily Zinthefer, Sophie He, Asher Frank, Milo Hansen, Lars Olson and Sam Premo-Hopkins. 

This year, the game for the VEX Robotics V5 level is called High Stakes. During the game, each robot’s goal is to pick up their color rings and place them on stakes around the field to get points. At the end of the game, robots have one last chance to earn points by climbing a ladder in the middle of the field.

At the State Championship, Electrical Dysfunction bested the other 63 teams in attendance by winning nine out of their 10 qualifying matches, all of their semifinal matches and ultimately, the final match. 

When asked if they expected this outcome, the six students broke into a chorus of nos. “We were definitely not thinking we were gonna win state,” said Premo-Hopkins, a coder for the team. 

Olson added, “We did not really expect to go to state either.”

Electrical Dysfunction will be the first OPRF robotics team in seven years to go to the World Championship and only the second team in OPRF history. The first team to go to Worlds, Dreadnought, went in 2017 and 2018.

The team does not attribute their success to chance and said communication and teamwork have helped them progress to where they are. Zinthefer, who codes the robot, said communication “is one of the reasons why I feel we’ve done so well, even if our bot doesn’t have all the bells and whistles as the other ones. It’s consistent, and we communicate.” 

As for teamwork, Hansen, a coder and builder for the team, said, “I think we realized how strong we are as a team compared to a lot of other teams, and I think we work really well together.”

He, who serves as the journaler of the group, explained that analyzing the team’s previous matches also plays a big role in their robot’s performance. She said, “We look at our mistakes and realize, ‘OK, this is where we are right now. What can we do to improve even more?’”

For their robot design, Electrical Dysfunction took a simple approach. Olson, the team’s driver, said, “We focused on one thing, and we tried to get really good at doing that one thing…I think that really helped us stay on top of things, especially under pressure.”

While teamwork has been one of Electrical Dysfunction’s strengths at recent competitions, He says that their team dynamic was one of their biggest challenges earlier in the year. She said, “I feel like our relationship between working and having fun sometimes gets blurred, and there would be moments where we honestly aren’t as focused as maybe we should have been.” To fix this issue, the team has created a specific plan of what tasks need to be completed for Worlds and by when. 

Currently, the team is preparing for Worlds and deciding what on their robot needs to be changed while also leaving around a month to test the robot prior to the competition. Anthony Romeo, one of the VEX Robotics club sponsors, has told the team that “a well-built robot that’s well-tested” will usually do better than a robot that attempts to overachieve. Romeo has also advised the team to “manage your expectations and don’t try and stretch yourself too thin.”

The members of Electrical Dysfunction want to have fun and learn from the challenges and people they encounter at worlds. Romeo said the team is going to have a similar mindset at worlds as they did at state: “We’re not necessarily dead set on winning, we’re just going to go out there with our best robot and see what we can do.”

Overall, the team looks forward to enjoying the experience of going to the World Championships. Frank, a builder, said, “We’re not expecting to win worlds, so we’re going in with a good attitude. We want to have fun. We want to win some matches. We want to show that OP and Illinois as a state have what it takes to stand up to other countries and the best of the best.”