Three Notre Dame robotics teams qualify for regionals; one team earns highest award.
Mildly Aggressive Bees team 3333A and 3333Y are with their trophies after a Jan. 13 VEX Robotics event held at Cranbrook Kingswood Middle School. From left, Ben Valade, Jackson Krieger, Manath Mohindra, Oliver Kayi and Jaimie Krankel. More photos below.
According to Jerry Palardy, who helps mentor the Notre Dame middle school teams, there were a total of 38 middle school teams at the Cranbrook competition.
"This was the first time that our 7th and 8th graders had a chance to compete against teams their age," he said. "And it was a big success! All six of our teams, which are all called the 'Mildly Aggressive Bees,' advanced to the event finals, and three qualified for the upcoming regionals."
Team 3333Y, "The Queen Bees" (Jaimie Krankel and Manath Mohindra), went undefeated in the qualification rounds and ended up as the #2 alliance captain. In spite of a major mishap on the way to the skill fields (dropping robot on cement stairs) they managed to score a whopping 99 points. All that, plus their nicely written and organized design notebook as well as their interviews with judges earned them the Excellence Award (the highest award at the event).
Team 3333J, "The Flubb Drive" (Jonathan Hubbard, Josh Lyiynen and Lee Lindsey), also went undefeated in the qualification matches and ended up as the #3 alliance captain mainly because of how well they play defense.
For team 3333A, "The Followers of Zaza" (Jackson Krieger, Oliver Kayi, Ben Valade and Teegan McLeod), the day started out bad and got worse. They lost their first three matches, and then were disqualified from their next two matches because their robot was longer than allowed.
"The robot hadn't gotten any bigger during the day, but that didn't matter," Palardy said. "With no other options, they decided to remove the mobile goal lift from their robot (their only method of scoring) and focus on defense. The boys were actually kind of excited about playing the spoiler role, getting in the way of other robots, checking into them, and creating general mayhem. Surprisingly it worked and they won their next match, and then got picked by the #2 alliance, because of their strong defense."
The alliance advanced to the finals qualifying them for the regional championship.
Team 3333Z, "The White Dragons" (Trevor Rowe, Joe Schiefer, and Sean Chaiyasate), had some bad luck in the qualification rounds, too, said Palardy.
"Their partners had a tendency to break down just in time for their matches, leaving them ranked very low for alliance selection," Palardy said. "Luckily for them, the #1 alliance had done some good scouting, and saw that the Z team was a super value for their 2nd pick. With the Z team as part of the #1 alliance, they went on to win the event."
Awards and accomplishments for the Mildly Aggressive Bees at the Cranbrook event:
3333Y – Excellence Award, Teamwork Finalist, 2nd Alliance captain, and 99 points in Skills (42nd in world rankings)
3333Z – Teamwork Champions, as part of #1 alliance
3333A – Teamwork Finalist, as part of #2 alliance
3333J – 3rd Alliance Captain, undefeated in qualifications, advanced to semi-finals
3333B (Jackson Plas, Joe LaSota, Payton Beckman and Aaron Palardy) – Advanced to semifinals as part of #5 alliance, 96 points in Skills (49th in world rankings)
3333X (Ian Chang, John Jernigan, Luka Cvetkovic snd John Milback) – Advanced to quarterfinals as part of #8 alliance.
Regional qualifiers after Cranbrook:
3333Y, 3333Z, and 3333A all qualified for the regional championship. Because of their skills scores, teams 3333B and 3333J also have a good chance of advancing to regionals.
Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.
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Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org