What a day! I think that everyone will say that they had a great time, though there were ups and downs throughout. I tried to prep all the students’ expectations with a grain of truth before the event started. This is a difficult type of activity to compete in. Everyone had many successful trials with their robots before going to the event, but chance and environmental circumstances play a big part in performance at competition time. While I won’t make excuses or go into great detail, these situations are learning opportunities and I am certain that everyone learned some lessons today. If the students won’t explain these lessons to you yet, I will be analyzing them and helping the students to get a better grasp on how things played out.
We did have one big success with Team Star (Kassidy Heller, Kymber Heller & Lincoln Lane)
taking third in the Santa’s Present Sorter event, we had many other near placing performances
as well. There were over 120 students from 5 different schools in attendance. A vast
majority of the students were 7th and 8th graders with at least 7 high school teams as
well. This made for very stiff competition and I am very proud of the overall performance of our
students.
Santa Sumo - out of 34 teams competing
● Bad Apples (Stormy Guttery, Tierney Lutters & Korbin Heller) - finished in 4th place
● Team Star (Kassidy Heller, Kymber Heller & Lincoln Lane) - lost in the top 8
● Mr Tank (Frankie Delaney, John Rielle & Marcellus Byler) - lost in the top 8
● The Pants (Hallie Mick, Ayva Kuhlmann & Carter Delaney) - lost in the top 16
● Red Rovers (Kirsten Mans, Isaac Mick & Ryder Lyon) - with bad luck got knocked out in
their first match
Santa’s Present Sorter - out of 11 teams competing
● Team Star (Kassidy, Kymber & Lincoln) - finished in 3rd place
● The Pants (Hallie Mick, Ayva Kuhlmann & Carter Delaney) - finished in 4th place
Reindeer Race - out of 36 teams competing
● Bad Apples (Stormy Guttery, Tierney Lutters & Korbin Heller) - finished in 4th place
● Team Star (Kassidy Heller, Kymber Heller & Lincoln Lane) - finished in 5th place
● The Pants (Hallie Mick, Ayva Kuhlmann & Carter Delaney) - finished in 7th place
● Mr Tank (Frankie Delaney, John Rielle & Marcellus Byler) - finished in 11th place
● Red Rovers (Kirsten Mans, Isaac Mick & Ryder Lyon) - got hung up on a wall and
finished in 30th place
Star Line Follower - out of 23 teams competing
● Bad Apples (Stormy Guttery, Tierney Lutters & Korbin Heller) - finished in 4th place
● Red Rovers (Kirsten Mans, Isaac Mick & Ryder Lyon) - finished in 7th place
● Mr Tank (Frankie Delaney, John Rielle & Marcellus Byler) - finished in 10th place
I would like to give a great big THANKS to the parents and grandparents who were in
attendance. Please pass this along for me to those who might not be getting this note. Even though event coordination was a bit chaotic and it might have been hard for everyone to feel like an intimate spectator of the events, I know that the students appreciated the support.
With the conclusion of this event, I am planning to let the students have some time off until after
Christmas Break. I will reach out to everyone when we are ready to resume work on robotics.
Until now, I have been scrambling with the kids to get their robots built and prepared for this
very event. I WILL be committing more time in the near future toward teaching more robotics
(mechanical and software design) principals.
I appreciate the positive attitude all the students have had so far and would like to thank all the
parents for making the effort to get their students to our robotics club sessions. I look forward to the growth that we can accomplish before the next event and know that although the
competition will be getting even more stiff our students will be better prepared to face the
challenges ahead.
Thanks very much and have a Happy Holiday Season!