Scoil na Croise Naofa are Robot Skills Champions 2018!
On Thursday the boys and girls involved in the VEX Robotics programme left at 8am, with Mr. Hayes & Ms. O’ Toole, to head to C.I.T. to compete in the VEX Robotics Regional Competition. Once they arrived they set up their pit and the drivers went to do some practice in the training arenas. We first brought our robot for inspection (which it passed with flying colours) before taking to the field for our first programming challenge match. Our coders scored a brilliant 28pts. Next was the turn of our driving team. They did really well in our first run and scored 57pts. We did a total of 3 Driving matches and 3 Coding matches. Our top score in the coding was 30pts which was the best of any of the schools. Our final Driving match was a sight to behold…. our two drivers had a fantastic run and scored 91pts!!!!! This meant that our combined best scored for coding and driving brought us to 121pts…. 1st place!
We then moved on to Team Challenge matches where our school would be partnered with another school to work together to score as many points as possible. There were 8 teamwork matches in total. Again our drivers did brilliantly by discussing tactics with the various other schools and coming up with a winning strategy. After the 8 qualifying teamwork matches we were once again in pole position! This meant that we were through to the finals and would be the last match of the day! Unfortunately things didnt go our way in the final teamwork match and we finished 3rd in this section of the competition.
The boys and girls also took part in a STEM Research project where they had to make a presentation in front of other school and 4 judges. The 4 presenters were brilliant and the judges questions were no match for all the information our students had to give!
The whole day was a fantastic experience and it was great to see our students come away with one of the top awards on the day after all their hard work and effort. We have now qualified for the National Finals on March 1st in C.I.T. and are already raring to go!!!!!!
