Wesleyan's Robotics Team Narrowly Misses Advancing to State Competition

After a successful season, Wesleyan’s two high school robotics teams – the Steel Wolves and the RoboWolves - missed advancing to the state competition by the narrowest of margins.

Under the guidance of Instructional Technology teacher, Linda McDaniel, both teams spent the past several months designing, building and programming two competition-ready robots.

Sarah Settlage, a senior, joined the robotics team for the first time this year.

“I enjoyed learning how everything worked. It was really interesting to figure out how to tweak our designs to better compete. My favorite part was seeing how well everything came together to make the finished product.”

Unfortunately, at recent FIRST Tech Challenge state-qualifying events, both team’s robots fell just short of the opposition.

In competition judging, points are awarded based on each robot’s ability to efficiently complete designated tasks. At the Kell qualifier on December 15, both of Wesleyan’s robots advanced to the semi-finals. The Steel Wolves went on to the finals, losing in the very last round, mere inches from completing the last bonus-round task!

At the RY Robotics region qualifier this past Saturday, the Steel Wolves and RoboWolves faced-off against some strong competition. Only one of our teams succeeded in making it to the semi-finals, and neither advanced to the finals.

“Though our students were disappointed,” Mrs. McDaniel says, “we were beaten by the team whose robot had the best design, and that’s the way it should be.”

The season isn’t over for Wesleyan’s robotics teams. In the next few weeks, they’ll be demonstrating their robots at the A. Worley Brown Boys & Girls Club and for our own lower and middle school students.

In summing-up the season, Mrs. McDaniel says, “I am extremely proud of the critical thinking and collaboration skills exhibited by this year’s robotics students. Their sportsmanship at competition and in the face of some tough judging decisions made them excellent examples of the Christian principles that make Wesleyan so special. It was an exciting season working with this great group of kids. They learned a lot from their experience both building and competing, and are already formulating ideas for the robots we will build next year.”

FTC Robotics Team Members 2012-2013 RoboWolves Steel Wolves Blake Center Michaela Bailey Grant Murphy Taylor Berg Philip Sawyer Joshua Bowden Sarah Settlage Will Collins
Andrew Gargus Kim Heng Stephen Johnson Drew Jones Vivian McCoy Patrick Ryan

Source: Wesleyan School website