Local schools in the spotlight at inaugural Northern Robotics qualifier

Nineteen teams from fourteen elementary schools in the district met at Sault College today to compete in the Inaugural VEX IQ Regional qualifying event.  This is the first time this event has been held in Northern Ontario, and replaces the former FIRST Lego League event.  This year’s game, “Bank Shot” had local teams design and compete in a miniature basketball themed event.

Topping the entries as the overall tournament Winner, was the Holy Family Flames team, taking home the “Excellence Award”, the event’s top prize for combined overall performance and judging results.

The Teamwork Match Winners were the alliance pair of the White Pines Intermediate Radius team, who partnered with the Anna McRae Annabionics to bring home the gold in an exciting playoff final.

Winning the major judging DESIGN Award was Rosedale’s Team Vextor, showing strong engineering skills in their robot design.

The Flames, Radius, Annabionics and Vextor have all earned invitations to next month’s VEX IQ Provincial in St. Catharines, where the top Ontario teams will compete to earn invitations to the World VEX Robotics Championships in April.

Other awards winners for the day also included:

Programming Skills Champion:  FH Clergue’s “The Pro’s”

Driver Skills Champions: White Pines Intermediate “Radius”

AMAZE (for overall driving and scoring ability): Parkland Robo “Panthers”

CREATE (for innovative design elements): White Pines Intermediate “Radius”

BUILD (for a strong and efficiently built robot): Holy Family “Flames”

Judge’s Award (for general overall team and robot strength): Ben R McMullin’s “Ben R 2”

Energy Award (for enthusiasm and energy – as voted by their peers): Parkland “Robo Panthers”

Sportsmanship Award ( as voted by their peers) – Rosedale “Ninjabots”