On Sunday of the 15th of February, St. Mary’s hosted and competed in the Middle School National VEXIQ championship, which included almost 30 Middle School teams and an additional 17 teams for the separate Elementary School tournament, with some of these teams coming all the way from Kyoto and Fussa! According to Mr. Kim, the primary Middle School Robotics coach, the majority of the robots within the tournament were created on the foundation of the Huey bot, the base bot that
was provided to all the teams by the VEX Robotics association. However, there were some innovative and ambitious teams, many of whom were from St. Mary’s, which built a robot from the ground up with it’s own unique features and designs.
“Some students found greater success than the Huey bot. Some students found that their designs were too ambitious, they ran out of time, or they just couldn’t make it work, and so they had to revert back to an older design or a more simple design,” said Mr. Kim. However, the Robotics coaches were confident in their ability to instil an appreciation and interest in STEM into their students.
Furthermore, the challenge of the VEX Robotics Tournaments was further amplified by the increase of the teams this year. “Last year we had about 29 teams. This year we had, I believe, about 46 to 48 [Middle School and Elementary School] teams that came to participate,” Mr. Kim stated. With more than a 50% increase in the amount of teams, there was a much more competition for St. Mary’s, however, the school was still able to perform well. St. Mary’s Team B, “NSLJ” achieved first place in the autonomous programming skills challenge, displaying their immense prowess in the category of the the tournament! Overall, St. Mary’s Team A, “Megaknights” qualified into the final round of 8, and placed 6th amongst the 30 teams.
All in all, it is safe to say that St. Mary’s Middle School Robotic’s team hosted quite a successful venture on February 15th.
