Hill elementary school hosts VEX robotics competition

HILL — On Jan. 20, Jennie D. Blake Elementary School hosted the “New Town VEX IQ Robotics Competition.” Nineteen robotics teams from all over New Hampshire joined three teams from Jennie D Blake for the competition. After 76 qualification matches of strategic robotics play in the Hill gymnasium the excitement was building for the final Teamwork Challenge matches. Nine finals matches were played and the Teamwork Challenge Champions were 4040A the Bears from St. Joseph Regional Junior High in Manchester and 10800A the Granite Gears from Elm Street Middle School in Nashua. “It was an unbelievable day of excitement and learning for all the students involved!” Dr. Brian Connelly, Principal at Jennie D Blake, said. The Jennie D Blake Robotics team has qualified two of their robotics teams for the New Hampshire VEX IQ State championship. Team 3243B and team 3243C will be traveling to Manchester Community College on Feb. 18 to compete against 40 of the best VEX IQ teams in the state.

Jennie D. Blake received three VEX IQ robotics kits in October, two through the NH Robotics Education Development Program, and one through the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation’s Girl Power Initiative. Six girls (Madison Bush, Violet Cline, Julie Cote, Amelia Corless, Arianna Hosmer, Lili Whittum) and 6 boys (Sammy Avery, Jace Blad, Anthony Estes, Wyatt Gamblin, Elijah Jones, Yanni Ntountourekas) from grades 4, 5, and 6 have been meeting every Tuesday night to design, assemble, and program their robots for competition. The three teams (3243A, 3243B, & 3243C) have competed in two other competitions this season, one in Nashua, and the other in Manchester. “We wanted to prove that a small community could hold a competition and we also wanted to serve as a model for other small schools to be successful with robotics,” team co-advisers David and Pamela Kelly said. David Kelly has 22 years of experience in high school competitive robotics and running robotics events, but bringing robotics to the elementary level is a completely new experience for him.

VEX IQ Robotics is the fastest growing segment of VEX Robotics which also includes high school level and college level competitions. Collectively, VEX Robotics competitions have 20,000 teams from 45 different countries. Each year in April a new game is released at the VEX World Championship. This year’s game, VEX IQ Ringmaster, is played on a 4-foot by 8-foot field. The object of the game is to attain the highest score by scoring colored rings on the floor goal and on posts, by having uniform posts (all the same colored rings), by emptying starting pegs, and by releasing the bonus tray. Two robotics teams work collaboratively in a match to score as high a total as possible.

New Hampshire shares in the growth of VEX IQ, increasing from one team statewide last year to 71 teams this year. This incredible growth is due to a number of factors such as the availability of grants; the robotic kits being plastic snap-together structures which can be used over and over with numerous iterations; the processor and sensors being powerful and simple to use; the programming language being versatile and easy-to-use; and the competitions being intentionally low stress and fun.

There are still VEX robotics grants available for schools and organizations to start new robotics teams. If interested email Dan Larochelle, RECF Regional Manager, at dan_larochelle@roboticseducation.org.

From left are JDB Robotics team 3243A members Madison Bush and Jace Blad, and team 3243B members Sammy Avery and Yanni Ntountourekas, deep in competition mode. (Courtesy photo/David Kelly)