Special to The Message
Washington Catholic School students, competing as the Cardinals VEX IQ Competition team 61531A, recently finished 20th at the Indiana State Robotics Competition in Indianapolis. As a result of their performance, the Cardinals secured a spot in the VEX Robotics World Championship, sponsored by the Northrop Grumman Foundation, where the best teams from across the country and around the world compete to be crowned World Champions.
The students competed with 130 teams from across Indiana. The action-packed day engaged elementary and middle school students in the 2022-2023 VEX IQ Competition Slapshot, presented by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation.
Washington Catholic’s VEX IQ Competition team includes sixth-graders Oliver Armstrong, Hank Haag, Kinsey Kelso and Adrian Newton. In the VEX IQ Competition, students, with guidance from their teachers and mentors, build a robot using simple, snap-together VEX IQ parts to solve an engineering challenge that is presented each year in the form of a game. Teams form alliances to work together to score points in Teamwork Matches and get to show off their skills individually in driver-controlled and programming Robot Skills Challenges.
The VEX IQ Competition fosters the teamwork, collaboration, critical thinking, project management and communication skills required to prepare students to become the next generation of innovators and problem solvers.
Sandy Davis, the Cardinal team advisor, said, “I am proud of these students for their ability to take what they’ve learned and apply it to building and programming a robot – and then going through the rigors of competing with their creation. The VEX IQ Challenge has truly sparked their natural curiosity about STEM subjects, which will serve them well throughout their education.”
“Teamwork, problem-solving and ingenuity are all on display at a VEX IQ Competition event, and students develop these skills all year long by participating on a robotics team,” said Dan Mantz, CEO of the REC Foundation. “Together, with the support of educators, coaches, and mentors, we’re fostering students’ passion for STEM at a young age to ensure that we have a generation that is dedicated to creating new discoveries and tackling life’s future challenges.”
About the REC Foundation
The REC Foundation’s global mission is to provide every educator with competition, education, and workforce-readiness programs to increase student engagement in science, technology, engineering, math, and computer science.