Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Saturday morning, the Wallace Community College Gymnasium was packed with middle, elementary and high school students preparing to showcase their robotic skills through their selected robots that were given months prior to the day of the competition.

During the event, two competitions were held in the school’s gymnasium. One was called VEX B5, which consisted of high school scholars and middle school scholars competing and VEX IQ, which consisted of elementary scholars combined with a few middle school scholars competing. 

“Each school has a kit that they build a robot from,” said Johnny Moss III, who is WCCS Robotics Program Coordinator. “They also have various levels of competition and strategy skills and during today’s event, they will come in, compete with their robots and see just how their robot tackles the competition field.”

Both tournaments with the scholars were held at the same time, and the schools that competed within the event were McKee Middle School, which is out of Montgomery Alabama, Joseph S. Bruno Montessori Academy, which is located in Birmingham, New Brockton Elementary School, that located in New Brockton, Alabama alongside two Prattville Schools, Millbrook Middle School and Elmore Community Team.

But, the majority of the schools that competed were also from Selma. 

Edgewood Elementary School, Payne Elementary School, Meadowview Elementary School, Clark Elementary School, alongside R.B. Hudson Steam Academy and Sophia P. Kingston Elementary School were all in attendance, ready for the competition day and according to Moss, it wasn’t the Selma City Schools first time participating. 

“Some of our schools in this area have been participating, competing in the robotic competition for the last three to four years and some of these schools have been doing it longer and they are more advanced, but getting involved in the skill of Robotics and the competition, has caught on. Our students are embracing it and through Wallace Community College efforts, we are just happy that we can provide this opportunity for our students in this area.”

Moss said the scholars who did really well within the competitions had the opportunity to compete for the semifinals and the finals within the day of the competition and one school from Selma, known as Meadowview Elementary among several others in the community told Selma Times Journal Reporter Faith Callens, about their robot and how they felt just before the official competition got started. 

“So today, we have a robot where we have to roll it in for the ball and once it comes through here, you push it back in the up and then it catapults out and in the past week, we just had to redo it, because right here it wasn’t long enough and when we went through the inspection, it was too high and we had to bring it down some,” said Anthony Collins, a student from Meadowview Elementary School. 

A coach from the local elementary school named Rita Carmichael said the students worked together for about two months trying to get the robot perfect just in time for competition and   said even though, the process took a long time, the scholars of Meadowview did not give up but stayed persistent to succeed.

“It been a whole lot of maneuvering this and moving that and it was a lot of problem solving going on but that’s what makes it amazing with this STEM initiative, all of this is STEM, math, science and for them to be problem solving together as a team, it’s totally awesome,” Carmichael said. 

Like Carmichael’s sixth grade group of scholars, other scholars around the gymnasium also shared their hardships with their robots and how they soon figured out a way to make the robot perform properly as well for the day of competition.  

“This is an opportunity to get our students involved in technology and obtain critical thinking skills, teamwork skills, engineering skills and computer science skills,” said Moss.

Overall, the competition concluded around 4 p.m. and the results of the VEX V5 and VEX IQ competitions were:

• Excellence award taken home to Team 22439D, known as the Bigger Brains for Millbrook Middle School
• Teamwork Champion Award taken home to Team 36116B, known as the McKee Tigers for McKee Middle School
• Teamwork Champion Award taken home to Team 1932A, known as YeeTurtle for Joseph S. Bruno Montessori Academy
• Design Award taken home to Team 36116A, known as McKee Middle School
• Robot Skills Champion taken home to Team 1932A, known as YeeTurtle for Joseph S. Bruno Montessori Academy
• Judges Award taken home to Team 1816A, known as the Meadowview Lions for Meadowview Elementary School.