Spartan Robotics Places Second at First Tournament
On Saturday November 11th, the St. Joseph School robotics club, Spartan Robotics, hosted 27 VEX IQ middle and elementary level robotics teams to compete in the first VEX IQ level robotics tournament hosted in our area. The tournament year was sponsored by a generous donation from Thomas Precision. In this year’s game “Full Volume”, teams of 2-4 students design, program, and test robots that can collect and sort various colored blocks for scoring in one of three goal areas. At the end of each match teams were challenged to park their robot in a designated zone on the field. In between matches, teams were judged on their robot design process and design journals by a team of professionals. Additionally, student teams participated in the skills challenge attempting to score the most points in a one minute autonomous program and an additional one minute driver controlled program.
The Spartan Robotics Team named Ctrl-Z consisting of St. Joseph fifth graders Jacob Charron and Michal Peterson placed second in the event finals. Additionally, they won the skills challenge at the event and were awarded the Excellence award by the tournament judges as the best overall robot at the tournament, which also included an invitation to the state robotics tournament in March. A number of other St. Joseph elementary level teams excelled at the tournament. Team Beast 2.0 consisting of fifth graders Siddarth Ganesh and Sharath Kommu finished in third place at the tournament. Team Triple-Threat fourth graders Max Delf, Eli Helgeson, and Zach Haughian were awarded the Judges Award at the event for special consideration as one of the event’s top teams. They partnered with Black Market Beans fifth graders Miles Turner and Landry Scott to finish fourth overall.
Spartan Robotics parent mentor Jeremy “Pete” Peterson commented “I am excited to see so many kids participating this year. At St. Joseph school we are competing with 10 robot teams this year which makes us one of the larger VEX IQ programs in the Western part of the state. This has only been possible because of so many tremendous parent team mentors and Warrior Robotics students helping out. Many of our teams were competing for the first time on Saturday and will have a chance to modify their robot designs and code before a second tournament later this winter. I am excited to see how all of the teams improve. We are grateful for the support Thomas Precision has played as our sponsor this year. Several parents from other teams commented to me that this was one of the best run events they had attended with their youth. This is a reflection of the huge number of parent volunteers who worked together to make this event a success.”
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