6th Grade Robotics Competition
March 12, 2020
Southern 6th graders traveled to the ESU on March 11th for the 3rd annual Robotics competition. Even though we could only take four team members to the competition, there were twelve members who contributed to the success of the team. Team members included Blaze Barleen, Haylee Barton, Tony Buckingham, Jeramy Colgrove-Habluetzel, Carsen Goes, Haylee Hoover, Logan Hopper, Kaycie See, Matthew Volner, Torri Carbonneau, Nick Morgan, and Axel Seeman. The four members who went to the competition and competed in 3 different events were Blaze, Axel, Carsen, and Nick. The team was coached by Jolene Bartels, Chaysen Bednar, and Cathy Hayden.
Before the actual events started, notebook scoring was revealed. Southern started off strong right off the bat by winning this competition. We were informed by the judges that our notebook blew the other teams’ notebooks out of the water, so we were extremely proud of our kids! The next event was the autonomous driver, where the boys unfortunately tied for last place. In the race track roadster event, their gaming skills and car design came into play, and they were able to secure 3rd place as they each took turns racing around two different tracks as quickly as possible while trying to avoid penalties. The last event was a no holds bar Battle Bot. Going into the Battle Bot event, the boys changed up their design to keep the car from being flipped over when attacked. The object of this event was to flip other cars over, disable them, or push them out to earn attack points. Even though the boys finished in 7th place, they earned 1 of very few attack points given out. It should be mentioned that Southern’s team consisted of only 6th graders. They were competing against teams comprised of 7th and 8th graders with a great deal more experience.