Waukesha STEM Academy Tests Its Mettle in Robotics Competition

At the VEX Robotics World Championship this past weekend, students from the learned valuable lessons in teamwork, problem-solving, robotics and culture.

More than 600 middle and high school teams from 19 different countries competed at this year’s VEX World Championship in Anaheim, CA, including 150 teams in the middle school division.

Each year, VEX teams compete in a new game. This year’s game, Gateway, had teams building robots to pick up plastic balls and barrels and deposit them in circular, upright goals of varying heights. Working together, an alliance of two teams competes against another alliance, making strategizing about offense and defense an important part of the competition.

The Steampunks, named after a class at the Waukesha STEM Academy called Steam, used every tool at their disposal, including a teammate’s language skills. Eighth-grader Shawn Ge was an important cultural bridge for the team as they discussed strategy with Mandarin-speaking teams

For Andrew Labott, eighth-grader and the team’s field coach, the most challenging part of the competition was losing a match and then preparing for the next match, in some cases a short time later.  A high point for the team was solving a problem with a motor that had plagued their robot the whole season.

“We finally fixed it," Andrew said. "We problem-solved it and came up with a solution that worked."

The team also visited Disneyland during their time in California, a first for all of the team members.  For eighth-grader Beth Thelke, Disney was the best part of the trip but seeing students from other countries was also a highpoint. The commonality of all the teams was memorable.

“Just seeing all the people from the other countries – it’s similar to what we do even though we’re on the other side of the world from each other,” she said.

Competition was fierce at the worldwide event and their official record of two wins, seven losses and one tie doesn’t tell the whole story. Three of their losses were by the slim margin of one point and their last match marked the first time a new part was used on the competition field.

The team installed and programmed a VEX product that was only unveiled the day before, using it in their last match. The speaker played Mission Impossible to the amusement of the announcer and players on the field.

It hadn’t been done before.

“It was fun and funny. A lot of teams asked us where we got it and how we did it,” Labott said.

The Waukesha STEM Steampunks included eighth-graders Shawn Ge, Beth Thelke, Andrew Labott, Colin Gilgenbach and 6th grader Bridger Crusan. This is the second year students from the Waukesha STEM Academy .