Story by Patrick Roy/Special to BayToday.ca. Photo provided by Team 1305. Video by Kate Adams.
Living up to their team motto ‘Never Ever Quit,’ the Near North Schools Robotics Initiative team rebounded from a crushing loss at the Waterloo First competition in March.
In a field of 30 teams Team 1305 came in last, but that loss only fueled the team to pick themselves up and dust themselves off and in turn deliver an impressive win at the Mississauga competition last week.
“We did have a tough schedule where the three robots we were against were the winners of the competition so it’s a little hard to rank higher when you’re schedule’s tough,” says team captain Martin Gange.
“We’ve always qualified at Waterloo.”
“This was our first year we didn’t qualify at Waterloo so we were a little bit scared, and then in Toronto we won the Engineering Inspiration Award and there was lots of excitement from everybody because now we know we’re going to St. Louis.”
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology.
At FIRST competitions students work alongside mentors to apply math and science concepts to develop functioning robots that will outlast others and solve the annual FIRST challenge.
The competition centres on sportsmanship that has the teams not only compete against each other but cooperate, help each other and form alliances at high-energy regional tournaments that measure the effectiveness of each robot, the power of collaboration, and the determination of students.
It is that dogged determination and living up to FIRST’s gracious professionalism that has impressed not only the community of North Bay and area but also the community of FIRST for the past 11 years.
“The team worked very, very hard because after we didn’t win in Waterloo, we felt the pressure from the other teams who are excellent teams and we knew that our competition was going to be even tougher in Toronto,” says mentor Judy Smith.
“So we worked extra hard to make changes to the robot and our presentations to help get our message out there.”
The FIRST program encourages mentorship.
Not only does Team 1305 have a base of community professionals that mentor the students on areas from programming, engineering, to public speaking, but the team also acts as mentors to other schools.
This year the team has taken on rookie teams from Lo-Ellen Secondary School in Sudbury and Huntsville High School.
Lo-Ellen Secondary School has qualified to participate in the World Championships as well.
“Their credo is gracious professionalism,” says Gange.
“Which is competing as hard as you can on the field while maintaining a balance of helping the other teams.”
“So, it’s not like the BattleBots things where you’d rip out a saw and start cutting another robot in half. This is... you know if another robot is about to tip over, you help them get back on whether they’re on your team or not.”
“In the pit area, which is the area where you fix your robot in-between matches they have a PA system and a team will go up to the lady working the PA system and say ‘yeah we don’t have this part, we really need this part for our robot’ she’ll put it on the PA system and within 30 seconds, probably five or six teams will all go to that team saying ‘I’ve got this part, here you go. Good luck with your matches.’ So it’s not so much about winning the competition it’s about having the best bot.”
There are many awards given out to the contestants and several ways to win including the Chairman’s Award which is the most prestigious and most involved award, the Engineering Inspiration award which is what Team 1305 holds the record for qualifying for, the Highest Rookie Seed which given to the rookie team who was the highest on the ranking before the elimination rounds, the Rookie All Star which is given to rookie teams on how well the team built their robot and how they promote science and technology in their community and the Regional and Tournament Winners.
Despite these successes and record holdings, Team 1305 is not without its share of challenges.
Engineering mentors are in high demand for the team.
Most of the teams competing have five or six engineering mentors to help with building the robot at the moment Team 1305 has two.
“We’re always looking for mentors,” states Gange.
“We’re always looking for engineers and machinists to help out.”
“Coding has always been interesting on our team," he adds.
“The reason for that is because we’ve had a programmer who was our programmer for three years and he wasn’t much of a social person, he didn’t share how to do it and least year he went off to university.”
“So this year we had a new programmer, his name’s Paul Belanger. He’s very knowledgeable on programming but he never programmed a robot before so he was a rookie at it and it’s still not 100% done but he’s done a great job at it so far. There’s still some improvements to be made before we do the championships.”
“We tried to hold workshops on how to program the robots the problem is that it’s A) hard to schedule workshops where everyone can come out and B) it’s hard to keep those workshops going so that I can teach these people how to do it and they’ll continue to do it and pass the touch.”
“So this year what we’ve started to do is write all our tutorials out in text based formats so students can go on their free will and just learn how to program.”
Another challenge is sponsorship.
Southern and eastern Ontario teams enjoy support for one to two major sponsors which aid students fund both the build of their robot and accommodations as they travel to competitions.
Team 1305 has enjoyed tremendous support from smaller sponsors including Near North District School board, OPG, The North Bay Chapter of the Professional Engineers of Ontario, and the Rotary Club to name a few, but would be very happy to welcome one or two big sponsors on board to help offset the $60,000 they need each year to run the program.
In the interim Team 1305 fills the financial gaps by holding bottle drives, car washes, online donations and other fund raisers.
Despite all the challenges for Team 1305, they still manage to have fun and work together with other teams in the competition in accordance with the FIRST Credo.
“Any students are very welcome.”
“We accept anybody from Grade 8 to Grade 12 and we have continuous intake which means you can come in at any time of the year and we’re always doing something year round.”
The World “Rebound Rumble” Championships, which is open to the public free of charge, takes place in St. Louis, Missouri April 25th to 28th at the Edward Jones Dome.
The National Air and Space Administration will stream the event live via webcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOXsdhZZSdM
To make a donation in support of the team's efforts to get to St. Louis please visit: http://team1305.org/
