CSM Robotics Team Going to Worlds

Members of the CSM Talons, from left, Ed Gesser of Mechanicsville, Wen Xing Lin of St. Leonard, and George Jenkins of La Plata, celebrate their Excellence and Tournament Champion awards won at a March 10 tournament. The awards qualified the team for the VEX-U World Championship.

The College of Southern Maryland’s competitive robotics team, the Talons, has qualified for the fourth year in a row for the VEX-U World Championships. After sweeping the March 10 tournament at Fairmont State University in Fairmont, West Virginia, the team won the Excellence Award and will travel to Kentucky on April 19 to 22 to compete in the world championship.

“The Talons had a huge victory today,” said Bernice Brezina, professor and interim division chair of CSM’s business and technology division, after the March 10 win. “They went undefeated all day at the West Virginia tournament. They finished first in qualification rounds and then went on to eliminations to win the Tournament Champion award. They beat Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the finals. The judges also awarded the Talons with the Excellence award.”

The team also beat teams from Virginia Tech, Rutgers University, Northern Virginia Community College, and Old Dominion University to get to the championship, but the win against WPI was particularly critical for the Talons.

“When we saw the [March 10 tournament] team list we thought we had a good chance at getting a spot to worlds,” said George Jenkins of La Plata, Talons team captain. “We had already competed against six of the 16 other teams previously this season. There were a few teams we knew nothing about from Georgia and Tennessee, but our main concern was the team WPI1, which has one of the best robotics programs in the country.”

Team adviser and assistant professor Ronda Jacobs commended the Talons. “They had an incredible sense of focus and were able to strategize on the fly in order to outplay their opponents,” she said.

For the VEX-U robotics competitions, college teams design, build, program and operate robots that can perform several tasks, like picking up objects and throwing them into their competitor’s court within a set time limit to earn points.

The Talons have had a successful year because the members work well together, Mr. Jenkins said. In addition to Jenkins, Wen Xing Lin of St. Leonard and Ed Gesser of Mechanicsville are the other two members of the qualifying team. Students Dillon Mandley of Charlotte Hall and Joseph May of La Plata are also members of the CSM Talons. “Wen Xing is really good at coming up with new designs and ideas to make improvements,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Ed is our head of construction since he can build strong and very durable parts. I am in charge of the sensors and programming. While we have these roles, everyone is still willing and able to help outside their role.”

The team’s advisers include Ms. Brezina and Ms. Jacobs, who “have taken care of all the administration that goes along with being a college robotics team, allowing us to just focus on winning,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Our coach professor [Bill] Luyster has been there all season helping us any way he could, keeping us on track, and his impact has really made our team capable of winning championships.”

Ms. Jacobs noted that the members of the Talons are also excellent students at CSM. “Despite their focus on robotics, they’ve been able to balance their studies and maintain high GPAs in engineering.”

The Patuxent Partnership and MDVOLT.org are the Talons’ sponsors.

For more on the Talons, visit the CSM Robotics website.

For more about the College of Southern Maryland, visit their Leader member page.