Almost 200 students from across the county filled the Lincoln Middle School gymnasium on Thursday for the Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) district-wide annual VEX robotics competition.
The students, representing nearly 50 teams from clubs and classes at middle and elementary schools, brought and operated robots that they had built for specific tasks.
Participants were judged in both team skills contests and a teamwork challenge, which required teams from different schools to work together. Both teams would receive the same score for a round they participated in together, then would share other rounds with other teams to build their overall scores.
Hunter Keen, a member of Chiles Elementary School’s “Animatronics” team, said the teamwork challenge is different from other sports he has played, and while working out a strategy with strangers can be difficult, hearing their ideas is also one of his favorite parts.
“It’s also fun how you can communicate with them, and ask them, like, ‘Should we do this? Should I do this?’” Keen said.
Animatronics was one of two teams that won the competition at Chiles in order to advance to the district. Team members said the competition is fun, but meeting people and building the robots are the real highlights.
Kelley Kostamo, one of the event organizers and ACPS’s supervisor of volunteers and partners, said students talk with their newly-assigned teammates while they wait their turn to compete, using the limited time to determine each other’s strengths and weaknesses so they can collaborate for the highest possible score.
Some of the students at Thursday’s competitions participate in robotics through a class at their school. For others, it is a club they choose to participate in.
At Chiles, it is a class that the Animatronics students said everyone has a chance to take. The team said their school does not have the budget for higher-end build kits, so they do not always have the pieces they need for their plan.
What they do have is creativity and leftover parts from years of robotics classes. With their coach’s help, they said they found the right pieces to combine and “make up for” the ones they were missing.
“Our robot is completely modified,” said Lucia Russell, another Animatronics team member.
Energy in the gym stayed high, with parents supporting their children from the bleachers, coaches and competitors tinkering with last-minute bot fixes and strategies in the “backstage” area, energetic emcees and cheers whenever a robot successfully landed a neon yellow ball in its hole.
Kostamo, said the competition helps students learn teamwork and engineering skills, but that it is also meant to be a fun activity.
A few hours in, the buzz doubled as organizers switched the format to have two matches running simultaneously in order to finish the event on time.
“I want for kids to have memorable moments in school, and I think this is one of the things that they’ll always remember,” Kostamo said.
In the elementary school division, the Robo Tigers from Glen Springs won the excellence, teamwork and design award, and Tiger Toss, also from Glen Springs, won the other Teamwork award.
In the middle school division, “we’re better-er-er-er” from Westwood won the design award and were champions in robot skills. Lincoln’s “Blue Chickens” and Mebane’s “Terrabytes” each took a teamwork championship, and the Oak View “Squirrel” team won the excellence award.
All those winning teams are eligible to go on to the Central/North Florida State VEX Competitions, held in early March, with a chance to possibly compete at the Worlds Competition in May. Additional teams might also play in the state tournament using their scores from Thursday, according to Kostamo.
Kostamo said Gas South has been a major sponsor of the competition for as long as it has existed in the district, which she estimated to be at least a decade. Other community partners, including The Education Foundation for Alachua County Public Schools, also contributed to the competition.
