Two robotics teams from I.J. Holton Intermediate School were able to show their skills at two big competitions this year.

I.J. Holton Team 8440C made it to the World Championship in Louisville, Kentucky, and I.J. Holton VEX Robotics Team 8440B made it to the VEX U.S. Open in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Team 8440C placed 56th out of 172 middle school teams at the VEX World Championship in Louisville over the weekend of April 20-23.

Team 8440B made it through the qualifications round but were eliminated in the first round of bracket play at the U.S. Open.

The best of the best teams from each level (elementary, middle school, high school and college) competed at the world championship, which included teams from China, New Zealand and other countries.

Team 8440C competed in the “Nothing but Net” event where a robot must throw a ball into a high or low net to get points. They’ve been competing in this event since the competition season started in November of 2015.

The team also earned points during the skills challenge where they demonstrated their robot. There were two parts: Autonomous, where the robot has a program to run on its own and drive-controlled where the robot responds to the person running the controls.

For the “Nothing but Net” event, two different teams join forces and compete against another combined team. The team was paired up with another team from China, which proved to be a good challenge for the students to work around language barriers, coach Kaylene Jensen said.

Jensen said it was a great opportunity to learn and grow.

“They were drawing pictures to represent each part of the robot on their team,” Jensen said. “Trying to communicate non-verbally is a great skill moving forward.”

It was also an opportunity for the team to look at a “spectacular level of robots” by observing other teams. Jensen said they had the opportunity to watch how other robots work, different advance levels, use GPS tracking systems and dual remote controls to control various aspects of the robot.

“They learned a great deal of things just by looking and talking with other teams,” Jensen said. “Hopefully many of them take that forward being part of robotics and hopefully into future careers.”

The I.J. Holton team’s season finished with the world competition, but they still have to lead a boot camp for next year’s teams, which is already selected. The new members will learn programming, building, engineering and scouting.

“The new students look to current team members to give them insight to get started,” Jensen said.

The teams start practice during the second week of September and official events start in November. Depending on how the team does at competitions leading up to the state meet in January, determines the length of their competition season.

There were 1,075 teams total from different levels. Jensen said a representative from Guinness World Records was at the event to record it as the largest robotics competition ever.

“It was fun to be part of that,” Jensen said.

Community support

Jensen wanted to give a special thank you to the community who helped support the team go to the world championship this year.

In order to attend the competition, the team needed $20,000. Because they are not funded by the school district, they started a GoFundMe page and did fundraisers to get to Louisville.

“Community support is important to the kids, it enabled them to move forward,” Jensen said. “Without the financial support of the people, we wouldn’t have been able to go.”

Altogether, $21,400 was raised and that was enough for all three teams to go and covered every expense for the students.

“We were able to reach our goal through community and business support and because of that, there was no cost to the students,” Jensen said. “We were able to go to all events because of strong community support, which speaks volumes of the community and how strongly we feel about giving kids this opportunity and experience.”