Photo Provided The Barnesville Middle School robotics team qualified during the state championships in Marion, Ohio, and will now head to the Vex Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas, next month. Pictured, from left, are Ryker Willis, Ronnie Duvall, Carson Johnson, Bonita Passmore, Joel Detling and Brooklyn Miller.
BARNESVILLE — A group of Barnesville Middle School students will head to the Vex Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas, next month after qualifying during the state tournament.
The Odyssey robotics team, made up of six middle school students, competed in the middle school state championship March 11 at the Marion County Fairgrounds Memorial Coliseum in Marion, Ohio, where they qualified in the skills challenge. Jon Jordan, Project Lead the Way teacher and team coach, said this is the third time the school has qualified for the world championship, though it will be their second time attending. The last time a team qualified from the school, in 2020, the event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve been on this trend where we qualify every other year with the first being in 2018. … In 2020, we qualified and they canceled the very next day because of COVID so we didn’t get to go compete. And now two years later, we’re here,” he said.
Jordan said there are a few different ways to qualify during a competition, including through tournament play, judged awards and skills challenge. He said the latter is something the team predominantly focuses on, as members have few ways to compete against others for practice throughout the year leading up to competitions. Barnesville is the only school in Belmont County to have a robotics team, Jordan said.
“We have few opportunities to compete. A lot of these teams compete a lot and so since we’re not getting much interaction with other robots in the ring, then we really focus on our skills. Plus I always tell them (students) skills is the one thing you can control, so we make sure we’re really good at skills and it really paid off for us this year,” he said, adding that the team had a good combined drivers score and programming skills score. “Our programming skills were one of the top scores in Ohio this year.”
Jordan said something that they will take away from the competition is the need to concentrate on additional tournament play, something the team is lacking. He has a plan to help improve their skills, though.
“We need to get into those situations and learn to compete against other robots. I think that’s something my teams are lacking right now because we only have two robots and it’s hard to simulate that. I think that’s a big reason we were not competing as well in the tournament phase. We have a plan moving forward next year so that each team will build two robots so we can set up more in-house competition to get us better prepared for that part,” he said.
The team of students includes Ryker Willis, a builder for the team; Ronnie Duvall, a builder for the team; Carson Johnson, a builder and driver for the team; Bonita Passmore, team programmer; Joel Detling, driver for the team; and Brooklyn Miller, the engineering notebook for the team.
Jordan said competing in the world championship is a great opportunity for the students, who are seventh- and eighth-graders.
“Honestly I don’t know where else they could get this kind of opportunity than through this Vex robotics that we do. It’s not just the robotics part of it – they’re going to be up against students from all over the world. It’s just as much a cultural trip as it is anything else,” he said.
He said he is proud of the team of students who worked hard during the competitions.
Jordan said the goal next year is for both of the school’s teams to qualify for the world competition.
“We’d like to get them all through, and I feel like we have a strong core base of students here,” he said, adding that he receives around 100 student applications each year from those interested in the program. He narrows that number down to 12 — six per team.
The world championship is set for May 3-5 in Dallas, Texas, where students will compete against just over 500 other teams from all over the world.
