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Top Tier Robotics’s team from Plymouth IN, 34543M “Mechannibalism” won the Design Award at the Musketeer VEX Robotics Tournament in New Pekin Indiana this past Saturday. The team of 8th graders tested themselves against 26 high school teams and 4 other middle school teams. The team consisting of Chloe Joshick, Elizabeth Schuh, Miles Stoneburner and Michael Wandland made it all the way to semifinals where they were eliminated by the eventual tournament champions from Washington Catholic and Heritage Christian in Indianapolis.
The Design Award is given to the team that best demonstrates their engineering process through documentation in a design notebook and an interview before a panel of judges. The Design Award is considered the 2nd place award at a robotics tournament. “For a middle school team to win this award at a blended tournament with high school teams is truly incredible,” said Head Coach, Jed Wandland, “it demonstrates that the kids know the robot inside and out, that they can communicate effectively everything it takes to get the robot to where it needed to be, and to people that might not be familiar with engineering.”
This has been the team’s best showing to date at a tournament that includes high school teams. The team has won the top place award, the Excellence Award, twice at middle school only tournaments and is currently ranked 1st in the state among middle school teams. “I’m really proud of winning Design this weekend, but I know there will be tougher challenges ahead at State Championships, so we need to keep pushing ourselves to get better,” said team primary builder and driver, Michael Wandland. Elizabeth Schuh, one of the team’s notebookers, felt some relief, “I can’t believe it. Winning an award again shows that we truly earned this. It’s a nice assurance that our work is paying off.”
Chloe Joshick, one of the other notebookers for the team gave insight into the competitive robotics community. “This weekend’s competition was long, but worth it! There were a lot of kind teams that were willing to help others during matches and in the pits.”
The team will compete in Chesterton this weekend at the Duneland Winter VEX Middle School Robotics tournament and then at the Indiana VEX Robotics State Championships, March 22nd at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
