Eight MPISD robotics teams representing E.C. Brice, Frances Corprew, and Vivian Fowler competed in the VEX IQ Mad Hatters tournament on Saturday, February 15 at Texas Middle School in Texarkana. The tournament featured 45 teams of elementary and middle school students from northeast Texas and the Dallas area. Despite losing power for several hours, the tournament continued and MPISD made a great showing.
At the end of six qualification matches, the top 22 teams advanced to the finals tournament, including the Wall-es from E.C. Brice (Melanie Ferritiz, Guadalupe Hernandez and Amy Guzman). They qualified in 19th position and ultimately ended in 9th place overall.
The Super Unicorns (Sophia Robertson and William Martinez) from E.C. Brice placed 24th after prelims, narrowly missing advancing to finals by 2 places. And the Corprew Cognibots (Jackson Bailiff, Melani Bautista, Kenley Collier, Ivan Flores, Angel Paco, Angelica Paco, and Lucas Ridenour) placed 27th in prelims, just missing advancing by a few places.
Also competing for MPISD were the Fowler Futurebots (Diva Desai, Ezequiel Martinez, and Ariana Ramirez), and from E.C. Brice, The Capybaras (Sebastian Rivera), the Super-Fast Lightening Zorses (Lincoln Verner and Ezra Evans), the Builder Bobs (Rigoberto Villa), and The Thunder Chickens (Giovannie Contreras, Colin Gillean, and Matt Snyder).
In the VEX IQ Competition teams of students are tasked with designing and building a robot to play with other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. Classroom STEM concepts are put to the test as students learn lifelong skills in teamwork, leadership, communications, and more.
MPISD currently has robotics teams all four elementary campuses, Wallace Middle School, and Mount Pleasant Junior High. They are coached by Jamie King at the elementary campuses and Tara Flores at Wallace and MPJH.
Photo:
The Wall-es from E.C. Brice Elementary School
