A robotics group consisting of three students from the Waukesha STEM Academy, the 2098B, have competed last week in the 2010-11 VEX World Championships in Orlando in Florida at the ESPN Wide World of Sorts.
This team won at a regional competition in Milwaukee’s Thomas More High School last fall and won a berth at the World Championships. These seventh graders, Riley Matthias, Andrew Labott and Colin Gilgenbach after winning the regional competition re-built, re-designed and re-programmed their robot, meeting and working at least two times every week for the past two and a half months. At the World championship they had a tough fight against almost 100 teams from Singapore, China, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US and Canada.
Two teams would join for each match and then play against another alliance consisting of two teams. The rankings are given based on the games won and also on the score of the losing teams. The Waukesha team ultimately scored three match wins with a rank of 76. Gilgenbach commented that robotics was a mixture of luck and preparation, just like all other competitions, and that the ranking obtained by the teams just didn’t begin to cover all that the teams have learnt and gained by participating in such kind of competitions. The opening ceremonies included a talk about STEM education’s importance.
Source: http://waukeshastemacademy.com/