UCS team earns state vex robotics championship

The UCS ThunderChickens VEX Robotics Team, 217D ThunderChickens is bound for an international competition after being named named Tournament Champions at the VEX Robotics Michigan State Championship this past weekend.

They qualified for the February 21 championship after earning four out of five top honors at regional competitions. The team will represent Michigan at the World Finals in April.

Students involved are: Dante Paglia (Senior, Utica High School), Andrew Fleury (Senior, CSI/Eisenhower), Ryan Oleski (Junior, CSI/Eisenhower), Kevin Kausch (Senior, Eisenhower), and former UCS student Brennan Coffey.

In the VEX Robotics Competition, presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play against other teams from around the world in a game-based engineering challenge.

Classroom STEM concepts are put to the test on the playing field as students learn lifelong skills in teamwork, leadership, communications, and more. Tournaments are held year-round at the regional, state, and national levels; local champions go on to compete against the best in the world at VEX Worlds each April.

The 2015-16 VEX robotics season kicked off last year in April when the season challenge “Nothing But Net” was released.

Nothing But Net is a fast paced game of collecting balls and scoring them in net goals in a 2 minute timed match. Two teams of two robots compete head to head against one another to score as many points as possible.

The game involves designing a robot capable of offense and defense, speed, agility, and most importantly a need for accuracy when attempting to score balls in this challenge loosely themed around the game of basketball.

Team 217D has been working since last April to design and build a championship robot for this season’s challenge. The team started competing in this season’s game already last October and has attended six tournaments leading up to the VEX Michigan State Championship.

217D ThunderChickens VEX robotics team has won an award at 5 out of the 6 tournaments they have attended and has demonstrated continuous improvement in their design and skills throughout the season.

In mid February, the team performed against 48 of the best high school VEX teams from around the state of Michigan.

Michigan has over 200 high school VEX teams, and only 15 teams advance from the state level to attend the VEX World Championship in April.

VEX Robotics Team 217D, the ThunderChickens, were the Tournament Champions as part of a three team alliance that outperformed all others in the elimination matches. The ThunderChickens VEX team put up two of the highest match scores of the day during elimination matches, achieving personal best performances for the season, and ultimately leading to the big win!

The team also won one of only two world championship-qualifying judged awards at the event, the Design Award. The “Design” award is presented to a team that demonstrates an organized and professional approach to the design process, project management, time management and team organization.

These two achievements double qualified the team to attend the VEX World Championship in April. The VEX World Championship hosts 450 of the top robotics teams from over 26 countries around the world.

There are over 10,000 VEX robotics teams that compete for this honor globally each year. Teams that attend the world championship are among the top 5% performing teams in the world!

2015-16 Season Awards for ThunderChickens VEX Team 217D
10/10/15 - Monroe County Community College: Excellence Award
11/14/15 - Kettering University: Design Award
12/12/15 - Haslett: Design Award
1/16/16 - Oakland University: Sportsmanship Award
2/6/16 - Yankee Air Museum: Tournament Champions & First Place Programming Skills
2/21/16 – VEX Michigan State Championship Tournament Champions & Design Award

VEX Michigan State Championship winning finals match video: https://youtu.be/U6sys0Aqack