Saturday, Jan. 9, Walsh Middle School’s Robotics Club will host the Framingham Nothing But Net Tournament.
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Walsh Middle School’s Robotics Club took home the top honors in the middle school division at the Nothing But Net VEX Robotics Competition last month.
This weekend, Walsh Middle School’s Robotics Club will host the Framingham Nothing But Net Tournament, in which more than 200 leading middle and high school VEX Robotics students and mentors from around Framingham will unite. The action-packed tournament, made possible by Raytheon Company sponsorship, will feature 42 teams who will compete with and against other schools in a series of back-to-back robot challenges.
Walsh Robotics Club’s competition teams are known as the WalshBots. Four teams from Walsh competed with and against 19 other middle school teams from around the region at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester.
The robotics game is played by scoring colored balls in high and low goals and by elevating the robot in a designated climbing zone.
WalshBot team 9791C Revolution took home the prestigious Excellence Award for the most outstanding robot team in the competition. In addition, they lead the alliance that was crowned Tournament Champions. 9791C also earned awards for Programming and Robot Skills. The team is composed of club members who made it to the VEX Robotics World Championships last year: Liam Neal Reilly, Ryan Memmott, Brendan Qi, Nicholas Tessitore, and newcomer, Connor Flynn. The 9791C Revolution was the only robot in the middle school division capable of scoring in the high goal by shooting across the whole field.
Team 9791 AWOL was selected by 9791C as an alliance partner and was able to also take home a Tournament Champions award. Members include Nicholas Heineman, Reid Xu, Aditya Patel, Jon Carlos ONeil, Anuraj Nair, and Jonathan Dacosta.
Team 9791F – Mrs. Roboto continued its strong season by ranking second in the qualification rounds and leading the alliance that was the Tournament Finalists. Representing the team: Isobel Garret, Maddy Wissler, and Katherine Zuliy.
Team 9791E – Amigo, the Two-Way Spanish team had a strong showing despite not taking home an award. The team is composed of students in Walsh’s Two-Way Spanish program and is seeking to apply its Spanish skills to robotics technical communications.
“I am extremely pleased,” said WalshBots advisor Pascal Chesnais. “Since the last competition in November, our students have ramped up their efforts in developing their robotics engineering skills. Their quality of robot design, construction, and engineering communications has risen quite dramatically in the past month. Their performance on Saturday was outstanding, and they still have a lot of growth potential ahead in the season. These students have seen what it takes to get to a world stage and are working hard to get there again.”
“What particularly touched me this past competition was that our top team, who dominated the whole day, opted to select as their third alliance partner not the next top ranked team, but instead looked for a team who would have not made it to the semi-finals to have a taste of what it is to be part of a winning alliance. At the end of the competition, members from that team came up to me to say how they were ready to call it quits with the robot not performing well at all throughout the day. Instead, being selected as a member of the top alliance inspired them to work hard to get their robot ready for the elimination rounds. They did not disappoint, and I look forward to seeing this team again in future competitions with renewed energy and confidence,” said Chesnais.
In addition to volunteer time, Walsh Robotics receives financial and equipment support from the RSVA, Raytheon, and QCC’s K12 STEM @Scale program.
Upcoming qualifying competitions for Southern New England Regionals:
• Jan. 9 at Walsh Middle School
• Jan. 16 at Quinsigamond Community College
• Feb. 13 at Quinsigamond Community College
All three competitions are open to the public and run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.