Pembroke Academy’s number 134 teams participated in their first VEX-Robotics competition on Oct. 20 at Trinity High in Manchester and caught up with some old friends.

Pinkerton Academy’s Team 241C won the competition with help from Taylor Olivier, a former Pembroke Academy student.

“It felt awesome to win, almost like I had never left Pembroke,” said Olivier. “I really do miss all of the people I left behind, though.”

There were no hard feelings from his former teammates but, perhaps, some nostalgia.

“I’m not happy that Taylor left,” said junior Ryan Martineau. “Not being close to him is making me become a little bit sentimental. We were great friends.”

Olivier said the feelings were mutual.

“I love all the people on 134 but I want to give them something to beat since they’ve been the top dogs for so long,” he said. “I just want to be ‘that guy’.”

Ms. Pringle, the coach, said this year there are definitely some challenges the 134 teams are facing.

“A lot of people on the teams graduated and so we have a lot of freshmen,” she said. “They have incredible ideas but they lack the core knowledge to make them a reality.”

Martineau, who is on team 134C, said his team’s struggle has been the ball launcher.

“We had a mechanism designed to launch the balls but the balls just weren’t hitting the flags hard enough.”

Other 134 teams are having issues with their ball launchers as well, some teams don’t even have one yet.

Another new challenge given to the Robotics teams was the introduction of the V5. The V5 is a new version of the cortex, the cortex was the old “brain”. The V5 has more “robust” wires, according to Ms. Pringle. The V5 also has LED display and a new set of motors to go with it.

Our main goal this year is to get all the Pembroke Academy teams to qualify for VEX’s States, Nationals and  Worlds competitions,” said Ms. Pringle.

The next competition will be held on Nov. 3 at Kennett High in North Conway.