Students shine in regional BEST Robotics competition
Published 11:38 pm Monday, November 5, 2012
Kenneth Grimes and Kalima Muhammad make sure their robot is ready for competition Saturday at the South’s BEST competition held at Wallace Community College. Both Grimes and Muhammad represented R.B. Hudson Middle School in the competition. Each team had three minutes to impress judges with their robotics performance. -- Sarah Cook
Area schools put their hard work to the test Saturday as they competed in the South’s BEST (Boosting Engineering Science Technology) Competition at Wallace Community College.
After all teams competed and judges tallied the scores, first place in the BEST Award was given to Keith High School while Dallas County High School received the BEST Robotics award.
The BEST award was a culmination of the team with the best overall robotics performance, engineering notebook, marketing presentation and good sportsmanship. The BEST Robotics award was judged solely on robotics performance in the field.
Johnny Moss, hub director for the program, said he was pleased with the amount of people who showed up to cheer on their school and support the BEST program.
“It’s phenomenal,” Moss said. “The crowd and the participation has been great. We got students from all over, bands and cheerleaders, so it’s really been exciting.”
Teams competed in eight rounds in which they had three minutes to get their robots to climb a pole in a space-simulated field.
Steven Scheer, a representative from International Paper and mentor for the Morgan Academy team, said he was impressed by how much the students learn through participating in the program.
“This gives students a great opportunity to combine everything they’ve been learning in school,” Scheer said. “Math, science, English — they use all these subjects to try and win the competition. When they get in the competition they learn to focus under pressure and deal with that time crunch too.”
Martin Middle School took home the title of second place in the BEST award and Martin Middle School received third. Morgan Academy won second in BEST Robotics and Greene County High School third.
Keith High School, Martin Middle School and Dallas County High School will go on to represent Selma in the BEST Robotics Regional Competition in Auburn Dec. 1 and 3.
Moss said he couldn’t have been happier with the turn out of the day.
“It’s exciting to see the kids come in here and test out their robots and then go back and make adjustments,” Moss said.
