Half of the teams Edgewood Middle School took to the Legos® robotics regional competition Nov. 20 advanced to state.
Edgewood teams also placed in eight of the top 13 teams. Thirty-two teams competed at regional competition at Elkhart Memorial Fieldhouse.
Ben Barkey, Science Plus teacher at Edgewood, said Edgewood had eight teams - about 52 students - competing.
The top nine teams at regionals advance to state, with Edgewood teams being about half of those that advanced. Edgewood teams placed second, fourth, seventh and ninth. Edgewood's second-place team was topped only by last year's state championship team, Barkey said. The other four Edgewood teams placed 10th through 13th.
"We did really well," said Barkey. "We had a lot of fun."
Every year the Legos® competition has a new theme. The theme this year is bioengineering.
There are two major parts to the competition. Students have to design a robot to complete tasks on a field, which are bioengineering-centered this year. The other half is to identify a problem in the bioengineering field and come up with a solution that will be presented to judges.
The Edgewood teams advancing to state in less than two weeks include teams Orange, Pink, Purple and Gray.
In the past, Edgewood took only two teams to regionals. Zimmer sponsored all of the teams from Barkey's classes this year.
"Without their help, we probably wouldn't be going to state with this many teams. It's a nice partnership because without the partnership, I'm not sure we'd be as successful as we are," Barkey said.
Besides four teams advancing to state, Edgewood also received three of the nine individual team awards.
The Edgewood Purple Team won first place for teamwork, which is a major award. The Purple Team took second overall.
Andrew Scheidt, Purple Team member, said he was happy and relieved when they won.
"Happy because we get to do this for another three weeks, and relieved because it's over and we got an 'A'," Scheidt said.
The Innovation Solutions Award went to the Edgewood Black Team. Their innovation solution was creating a heart valve that grew as the body grew.
Black Team member Camille Kerlin said, "I'm glad we put in the time to figure out something that would be good."
She said the heart valve idea came from her own experience.
"I have a heart problem myself so we decided to use that to base something off of," Kerlin said.
The Creative/Sharing Presentation Award went to Edgewood Red. The team's presentation was on correcting spine posture.
Red Team member Diane Wack said, "It was really exciting that all of our hard work paid off because we went and presented it to many places, and it was exciting to get an award for that."
State competition is Dec. 11 at IPFW in Fort Wayne. Edgewood's teams have about two weeks to improve their robots. While Edgewood's teams' weakness has been robot performance, their strengths include presentations, projects and enthusiasm. The time the teams have before state will allow them to revamp and redesign their robots.
The judges' comments from regionals also will be reviewed to help the teams improve their robots.
Barkey said there will be 48 teams at state competition.
This is the fourth year Edgewood has participated in the robotics competition. Since then, Edgewood has taken eight out of 14 teams to state.
In the first and third years, the two teams that went to regionals advanced to state. In the second year, the two teams did not advance. This year, eight teams were taken to regionals with four advancing to state.
For regionals this year, students got on the bus at 6:30 a.m. Nov. 20, and arrived home at 8:30 p.m.
"It's a pretty long day," Barkey said.
He said he tried to get to every team's event, but each team had three presentations and three competitions.
One of Edgewood's strengths is its students' independence, Barkey said. Students are able to be individual, responsible learners.
"The proof is how well we finished," he said. "It always makes for a lot of fun."
Kerlin said, "It was fun. It was different than I expected. There were a lot of people there and the excitement was high. The robotics was hard because there were people who had more experience than we did."
"It was really exciting and it was different than I expected, but it was fun to be there with all of my classmates," said Wack.Brown Team member Madison Berman said, "It was really fun. We got to see what all the other teams did. Some of the things were pretty difficult, but not as bad as I imagined they would be."
If she got to do it over again, Berman said she would definitely do her team's robotic design differently, as well as teamwork.
"Our teamwork - we kind of fought a little bit over things," she admitted. "I wasn't good with teamwork before. Now, I'm a lot better working with people."
Teamwork helped Scheidt's team win a top prize, but he learned more about it during the competition.
"Our teamwork - we got a perfect score on that and got an award. The rest of our stuff was slightly above average, so that helped," he said.
Scheidt said he learned, "How to get along with people even if its a bad day or whatever. Sharing and cooperating with others."
