By Rebecca Miller, ’12, Contributor
What do you get when you combine eight middle school students, three coaches, and one robot named Ollie? A state-bound robotics team. CCDS’s Middle School robotics team, dubbed Epic Pwnage, with team members Grant Swinton, ’14, Victoria Paff, ’14, Brian McSwiggen, ’14, Elizabeth Grace, ’15, Elizabeth Miller, ’15, Marissa Beyette, ’15, Ben Paff, ’17, and Anna Beyette, ’17, along with coaches Robert Baker, Fred Beyette, and George Swinton, took part in the First Lego League regional competition on Dec. 12 and 13. The team won prizes for teamwork and technical robot design. Additionally, it earned a spot in the state competition at Dayton.
Thirty-nine teams took part in the regional competition at Cincinnati State, which lasted two days. On the first day of the competition, three evaluations took place. Team building evaluated teamwork by giving each team a task to complete in ten minutes. The project portion had each team solve a problem in its community. This year’s theme was transportation, so the team, led by Victoria Paff, designed a better way for the CCDS carpool to work. This part of the competition was worked on throughout the months of practice. The third part of the day was the technical evaluation, in which judges interviewed the team members about the design and method of function of their robot. Judges also watched the robot work to test its design.
In the second day of the competition, the team competed in the board competition. The board has various tasks, given ahead of time, which each robot must complete. The team, now led by Miller, programmed the robot to perform each task to earn the maximum number of points. That day, there was also a scheduled collaboration between two teams to make a robot perform the various tasks on the board. This part of the competition was not judged. Instead, it was a fun way for teams to meet each other.
The CCDS team will now move on to the state competition in Dayton on Feb. 6 and 7. There, they will face the same competition, but with the addition of tougher judging and more challenging teams to go up against. The Epic Pwnage team is currently practicing about three times a week, hoping for a win in Dayton.