INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Five robotic teams from Indianapolis Public Schools’ Cold Spring School at Marian University will be heading to the Vex Robotics World Championship in May in Dallas.
They’ll join 30 robotic teams from Indiana. Cold Spring School will be sending more robotic teams than any other school in Indiana.
Elementary and middle school students build and program robots to do tasks, such as collecting 4-inch balls and shooting them into square baskets. It’s robot basketball, where the hardware passes the ball too.
Lolo Redding Glassburn, a 9-year-old fourth grader, is going to the world championship for the first time “I’m very excited and I can’t wait. It’s a new opportunity. A new experience.”
Glassburn tells News 8 she loves building robots and being part of this team. “It’s a place where I can be myself, express my creativity. I could put my mind to the test. I love problem-solving. I get to build and make tons of friends.”
Students work together as a team. Some drive the bots. Others build. Others program. Fifth grader Tony Cherry is coding. He’s a professional. He went to the Vex Robotics World Championship last year, and he is going again this year. “You can get very nervous, and get really excited like you get that adrenaline going in your whole body.”
Cherry said he’s much more calm and collected this year.
Cold Spring School has been competing on the Vex Robotics World Championship for eight years. It has trophies to prove it. A large shelf in one room is filled with more than 100 trophies, and there’s no more room. They have to store the other trophies elsewhere.
“People want to win, but I don’t honestly care if I win or lose because I’m just having a great time there,” Cherry said.
Genevieve McLeish-Petty, computer science teacher and robotics coach, said, “This is the purest form of education for kids. They get to decide what they want to learn.”
McLeish-Petty has been teaching robotics for eight years, and says the contests are not about winning “We have a lot of trophies, but the largest testament to our success and what we love about our kids is the number of kids that return, the siblings that return.”
