What a trip for Notre Dame's VEX Robotics teams; students look forward to next season and the new robotics lab.
Last week, Notre Dame sent two "Mildly Aggressive Bees" robotics teams down to Louisville, Kentucky, for the VEX Robotics World Championship (VRC). This event, which ran April 25-28, featured small metal robots built by middle-school teams of students. It is truly an international competition; NDPMA kids were paired with and against teams from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Columbia, and Saudi Arabia to name a few. In fact, more than 800 teams from 50 countries participated at this event, which was held in the Kentucky Exposition Center, a venue much larger than Cobo Center.
According to Jerry Palardy, a school parent and a longtime robotics mentor, there are two aspects to the competition: match play and skills.
"In match play, teams are randomly paired up with another team and play against an alliance of two other randomly paired teams," Palardy said. "Each year there is a different match game challenge; this year's 'In the Zone' game required teams to collect and stack cones. In the skills challenge, teams are on the field by themselves and have one minute to score as many points as possible. A big part of the skills challenge is autonomous programming, something Notre Dame teams excel at."
Team 3333Y, which consisted of the Queen Bees (and John) (Jaimie Krankel, Manath Mohindra and John Jernigan), won second place in middle school in the skills challenge. This is the highest award that any of NDPMA's VEX or VEXIQ teams has ever achieved. The skills finals were played in front of a large crowd at the same arena where Muhammad Ali won his first heavyweight boxing title. It was quite an experience. Check out the video: https://youtu.be/2DO_IPfFczM
Team 3333B, also called SMASH (Payton Beckman, Joe Lasota, Aaron Palardy and Jackson Plas), also excelled in skills, coming in fourth place. In addition, they won the energy award for their enthusiasm, as well as for the loud, relentless cheering from their adoring fans (NDP parents). However, the high point of the event for this team was advancing to the elimination round for match play, making them the first NDP team to ever advance that far in VRC.
"As alliance captain, 3333B chose a team from Hudsonville, Mich., to be their partner (they could not pick 3333Y because they were in a different division)," Palardy said. "The eliminations are a lot like the sweet sixteen in baseball's March Madness: 16 alliances are put into brackets based on their ranking. One loss and you're out. The Michigan alliance faced off against a highly favored alliance from Shanghai, China, and they nearly pulled off an upset, but the Chinese team took the win and went on to win the division title." Here is a video of their elimination match: https://youtu.be/4aqCN8JAdEI
Palardy said the Vex World Championship was a fantastic finish to a long and challenging first year in VRC for Notre Dame.
"At the beginning of the year, the teams thought they would be lucky to make it to the state championship, but they made it to 'worlds,' and they left their mark and learned a lot along the way.
"Of course, this would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many parents, especially Mark Krankel, Craig McLeod, Rich Beckman, Anthony Plas, Jeff Schiefer, Brad Jernigan and Ken Chang who mentored the teams and helped organize all of the practices," Palardy added. "Also, a big thanks to Notre Dame teacher Sue McGinnis for all of her help and for letting the teams use her classroom. We can't wait for next year and that new robotics lab."
Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. Notre Dame's upper school 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 schools enroll students in pre-kindergarten through grade eight. All three schools 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.