Kristin School wins VEX Robotics World Championships

The K-Force team members (left to right): Mr Ken Coulson, Jamie Davis, Sam Silver, Nathan Allen, Kent McLeod, Christian Silver, Vassily Shumane, Lee McLeod, Michael Shafer, Matt Smitheram and Mr Martin Allen.

The VEX World Robotics Championships were held in Dallas, Texas, in late April and the Kristin School team were awarded Tournament Champions of the High School competition.

A total of 14 NZ teams from 11 Senior schools attended the event. It was the first time that Kristin had attended the World Championships.

Various ‘Scrimmages’ take place in the spring and over the summer, culminating in the Nationals which were in March at the Telstra Clear Pacific Stadium.

Massey University (Albany) encouraged the students and were paramount in organising these events.

Robotics is an initiative stemming from the USA where NASA and other science and technology forums looked at ideas in which to get students interested in these areas and potential careers.

NASA was one of the main sponsors of the World Championships as well as Carnegie Mellon University, one of the top Engineering Schools in the USA.

The students build a robot to their own specifications, programme it and then get it to do what it is programmed to do – hopefully in this case, playing the game of picking up the most balls and placing them either in set containers or in your opponent’s territory.

The 11 NZ schools were: Rangitoto College (three teams); Avondale (two); Home School (two); Kristin School (two); Glenfield College (one); Lynfield College (one); Mount Albert Grammar School (one); Onehunga High School (one); Palmerston North Boys High School (one); Rutherford College (one); Freyberg College (one).

There were approximately 400 teams taking part. All of the Kiwi teams did very well.
At the tournament, one of the Kristin School teams (2919 – Nathan Allen and Vassily Shumane), a Chinese team from Shanghai, (favourites for a win) and one of the Home School teams joined in an Alliance. They battled through to the finals, defeating the other Kristin team in the process and in a nail-biting finish, beat the previous winners to become the new World Champions.

The other Kristin team (2919B – Kent McLeod, Jamie Davis, Michael Shafer and Christian Silver) also picked up awards – the Judges Award, presented to a team the judges decide is deserving of special recognition, taking account of special attributes such as exemplary effort and perseverance at the event and team accomplishments or endeavours throughout the season.

This was the penultimate award presented during the awards ceremony and is considered a supreme award.

Also the Think Award, presented to a team with clearly written autonomous code which is consistently successful in the field, who can clearly explain their programming process from strategy to syntax and it is also based on teamwork and interview quality.

The student support crew for both teams: Lee McLeod, Sam Silver and Matthew Smitheram provided important scouting reports and maintained the competition area throughout the tournament.

The Kristin School students have been hugely successful, benefiting from advice and mentoring from technology teachers Ken Coulson and Martin Allen over the last 12 months.
These two teachers practically lived at school in the month leading up to the competition.

Many other Kristin students have also been involved in the Robotics programme which commenced at Kristin about 12 months ago.