A group of students from a small corner of rural Wharton County are taking on the future and driving with it.
Louise Middle School will be fielding three teams at the Hearts Abound VEX IQ Robotics Competition in Texas City Saturday.
The Louise Robotics Team is in its second year and is comprised of 11 students and led by science teacher Kole Kopnicky and Denise Weber, director of the Gifted and Talented/Accelerated Learning program at the school.
This year’s competition involves a timed contest in which robots entirely built, coded and driven by the students must gather and shoot a ball through a goal.
The students are then interviewed by judges and have their robot designs evaluated.
This is only the second in-person competition for these high-tech Hornets.
“I’ve wanted to have a robotics team since before I came to Louise ISD when I was working in Matagorda,” Kopnicky said. “I have a close friend with someone from VEX Robotics who had really been pushing me. When you see how low the scientific literacy scores of students these days, this is something they really need.”
The team’s robots and equipment come entirely from a grant by VEX that Kopnicky was able to help secure.
“None of this would be possible without his grant,” Weber said.
The benefits to the students involved go beyond the scientific.
“It’s also about team building and communication and problem solving,” Weber said. “We’re not even allowed to coach them during the competition. This is all student-driven.”
Seventh-grader Kyle Tillery said he really enjoys the coding, but shows clear aptitude for driving and operating the robot as he drains shot after shot.
Kopnicky and Weber hope to continue to grow the program both within Louise ISD using drones at the high school, and throughout the rest of the area, potentially inspiring El Campo and Wharton ISDs to start their own programs, providing the Hornets with local rivals.
As surprising as it may seem to see a robotics team in a rural town, Kopnicky says its in the best interest of the schools to embrace the idea, as robotics and technology become more integral to agriculture in the future.
Another goal is to get the team to larger competitions such as the VEX Robotics World Championship held in Dallas in May which sees teams from all over the world gather to compete.
“It really is like the Olympics of robotics,” Kopnicky said.
VEX Robotics is a world leader in robotics education that provides curriculum, professional development, coding tools, robot kits and competitions with programs available for pre-Kindergarten through college.
The Hornets will field an eighth grade team of Ava Tiller, Eli Tiller and Joshua Munos. The seventh grade team contains Tillery, Hunter Rodgers and Croix Cortez, while the sixth grade team is made up of Liam Gresham, Levi Slater, Dillon Vasquez, Jayden Sodungen and Cadence Travino.
The competition begins at 7:30 a.m. Saturday at the TCISD Robotics and Stem Center, 1015 14th North in Texas City.
