(November 15, 2012) — If, on the sunny morning of Oct. 27, you walked into the gymnasium of John Burroughs High School in Burbank, you would would have heard the sounds of blaring music, crowds cheering and teams conversing. This isn’t just any ordinary sport: it’s the LA Robotics Fall Classic.

Clark Magnet’s Team 696, The Circuit Breakers, competed in the Southern California Regional Robotics Forum game challenge with their robot, Queen Hannah’s Revenge. “It’s the last time we get to play in the 2012 Robotics season,” said sophomore Dylan Greicius. “I’m really excited for the 2013 season.”

In the gymnasium, Clark’s section of the audience could be clearly seen with the easily recognizable colors of pink and green. The members of Team 696 who were not behind the actual controls of the robot held clipboards for scouting the match and judging other team’s robots. “Some of the other teams like Team 987 and Team 330 are pretty intimidating,” said Greicius.

“We’re trying our best to come up new strategies to counter their plays.” Directly above the scouters, watching from the upper part of the gym are several groups of videographers filming each second of every match involving Queen Hannah’s Revenge. Senior Alex Deravanessian filmed interviews with Robotics members, senior Guy Burstein and junior Saikiran Ramanan, to use for compiling into promotional videos that the Circuit Breaker’s media team will use in the future.

Throughout the competition, Team 696 played several matches being teamed up and placed against schools from not just across the Glendale county, but robotics teams from all over the Los Angeles School District were invited. “I felt like we did really well,” said senior Bradley Lunsford from behind the controls of Queen Hannah’s Revenge. “We fulfilled our goal by the end of our matches.

There are some intimidating teams here. We’re not the best team [in this competition], but we’re not the worst.” Team 696 barely made it into the top 12 teams of the competition, right behind Team 987 and Team 330. In the next part of the competition, Team 696 made it to the quarterfinals but, sadly, lost. “This surprised me a little,” said junior Christopher Kramer. “But I knew that everyone tried their best. Everything was made better when we were awarded the honor of ‘Highest Quality Robot.’” “The Fall Classic was a great experience,” Kramer said.

“It was my first competition, so it was an entirely new experience for me. I was surprised by the amount of energy that every team had and how teams were not afraid to compliment each other. There was just an overall positive attitude in the building.”