Regional Robotics Competition

Supplied by the Algoma District School Board…
Local VEX IQ Event selects the “Ringmasters” to go to Provincials.
Sault College hosted their 3rd annual elementary school VEX IQ Qualifying tournament on Saturday, with 39 teams from the Algoma District entered to compete in cooperative and competitive robotics challenges.
Topping the field of robotics teams was F.H. Clergue’s “iSMAK”, a third year veteran team who used their experience to secure 4 of the major awards for the weekend event. Their top award, the “Excellence Award” for overall performance and judging superiority secured them their first invitation to Provincials as the overall event champion.
They also combined to form an alliance pair with their sister team the “Clergue Voyageurs” to take home the Teamplay Gold Medal, earning both teams a Provincials Invitation. The narrowly defeated the pair of robots from St. Basil Catholic Elementary school and Thessalon’s “TPS Thunder” who brought home the silver medal trophy.
iSMAK also turned out the top effort in the STEM research presentation, which required teams to research a Science or Technology related world problem and offer solutions. Then they capped off their successful tournament by posting the top performance scores in the individual team Robot Skills Challenges; a combination of Driver skills and programming skills competitions, while also posting the 5th highest Skills Challenge scores for the grades 6-8 division in Canada so far this year.
The top Design Award, for engineering skills and ability, which also added a Provincials invitation, went to the “NDS Grand Loups” team from Notre Dame du Sault.
The Clergue Voyageurs, iSMAK and NDS Grands Loups will head to the VEX IQ Provincial Championships in March, while several teams, who posted excellent Skills scores will be awaiting the final Provincial teams standings to see if they will earn Wildcard invitations based on their scores this weekend.
Other awards and noteworthy performances include:
Create Award (for creative and innovative design elements in their robot): “Team Missanabie”, who also came in third place in robot skills but also posted the current highest score in Canada in their grade 3 to 5 division.
Build Award (for efficient and robust robot construction): Thessalon’s “TPS Thunder”
Amaze Award (for superior scoring skills and strategy): RM Moore’s A-team
Judge’s Award; for strong overall performance in all categories; The Tarentorus Tigers
Silver Medal in Robot Skills; FH Clergue Voyageurs
Energy Award; for high team energy and enthusiasm: The Parkland Intermediate team,
Sportsmanship Award; Korah Intermediate School’s “Girls Powerf”
This concludes the season for many of the local elementary school robotics teams while some eagerly await the Provincial Championships. About twenty teams in the province will be added to the final roster through Robot Skills rankings in Ontario, and several local teams sit very high in these rankings, including Team Missanabie, TPS Thunder and NDS Petites Loups who are 1st, 3rd, and 6th in Canada (respectively) in the Elementary division as well as “Tarentorus Tigers”, the “Blind River Bot Builders”, and the “RM Moore B team” who stand 10th , 12th and 13th in Canada in the Middle School division, all of whom could still advance to Provincials later in the season based on their Skills scores.
Event Director Jonathan Budau would like to thank perennial league and event supporters Tenaris Algoma Tubes, PEO (Algoma chapter) and OACETT (Sault chapter), the Algoma District School Board, and event hosts Sault College, plus the thirty volunteers who made this event possible.