T-R PHOTOS BY ROBERT MAHARRY - In the top photo, from left to right, Paxton Foor, Lucas Sohm, Dustin Aiken, Graham Fiebiger and Alex Holmes from MARSHALLTOWN Co. won first place in the 20 ounce division at the MCC Battlebots competition on Saturday, while Josh Phipps from Emerson, right, was the runner up. At bottom, the Emerson team of Jesse Serrano, Nathan Vaughn and Adam Harmon (wearing Hawaiian shirts) finished as runners up in the three pound division, and the Gregg Young team of Ana Cortes, Logan Woods, Milagros Lopez and Eli Victor were the champions.

Teams comprised of employees at several local companies came together inside Dejardin Hall on Saturday morning for the annual Battlebots competition, with entries from Gregg Young Chevrolet in the three pound division and MARSHALLTOWN Co. in the 20 ounce division emerging victorious. Emerson had the runner-up entries in both divisions.

As the participants explained in subsequent interviews, the objective is simple: inflict “maximum destruction” on opponents in a demolition derby of sorts inside the miniature arena. But as Logan Woods of Gregg Young explained, a lot of work goes into the finished product.

“It was definitely a time crunch. It definitely took weeks to do (and) find the right design,” he said. “We just wanted to find the most destructive bot and the most entertaining, and I think we did that today… You’re just trying to go in there, destroy everything and leave.”

And while most Marshalltonians may associate the city’s high-tech jobs with companies like Emerson, MARSHALLTOWN and Mechdyne, members of the Gregg Young team were happy to show that a car dealership could hold its own even if robotics is more of a hobby for them.

“It was great because last year, I lost to Emerson,” Woods said. “It was absolutely great.”

Alex Holmes, a mechanical project engineer at MARSHALLTOWN, recalled that his team finished last a year ago, and failure lit a fire to address and correct the problems with the previous robot.

“Our defense is our offense, so our blade spans well out of our body. So our thought was ‘If they can’t get to us, we get to them first,’ so the problems we had last year — we had a flipping over issue, which we saw in our first finals match here — but we did fix that,” he said. “So if we did flip over, we did pop back up, and we had some issues with our body material being too weak and we had some bots shred it last year. We changed our body material, so it was just analyzing what was bad and making those corrections.”

An Emerson team defeated MARSHALLTOWN last year, so like Woods, Holmes was happy to get revenge. In addition to fostering friendly competition between local entities, the competition also supports a good cause by funding scholarships through the MCC Foundation.

MCC Foundation Director Elizabeth Wise, who also serves on the Marshalltown Community School District Board of Education, said a lot of preparation went into working with sponsors and the college while coordinating the logistics of the event. There were six entries in the 20-ounce division and four in the three pound division.

“All of the proceeds for this actually goes back into the students here at MCC, where we provide scholarships, so all of that money stays right here on campus,” Wise said.

Wise’s predecessor Carol Park is now employed as the director of development with the Iowa State University (ISU) College of Engineering but was on hand to help out with the event. She noted that events like the Battlebots competition are “exactly” the kinds of things ISU likes to see from transfer students who are coming in and an excellent opportunity to gain hands-on experience.

“They love this. They’re telling the students ‘This is the kind of thing you should get involved in,’ so it’s actually helping the students in their transfer,” Park said.

Excitement is already building for next year’s competition, and Wise hopes to see even more entries in the future.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.