CANTON, Ohio — The Champs from Champion Middle School in Champion won the judges award in their season premier Dec. 16 at the Canton Country Day School. Three teams from Warren City Middle Schools also competed.

Seven students from Champion participated in the four-part competition that included technical, project and teamwork presentations followed by a robot competition. In the technical presentation students explained to the judges how each one of them did on the team. They also explain their robot, and what they programmed it to do. In the project presentation the students explain the theme of this year’s game, Nanotechnology, through a skit, video or PowerPoint — whatever presentation method they preferred. During the teamwork presentation, the judges ask the students to solve a particular challenge within a set amount of time. The object is to demonstrate teamwork. In the actual robot competition, the machine is asked to complete nine challenges. Scoring is based on completed missions.

“This is basically a student run activity,” said Delphi Engineer and Team Leader Mark Baka. “The adults are just coaches and mentors. The students must do all the presenting to the judges behind closed doors, with no adult mentors or coaches present. It promotes team work and satisfaction that they did it themselves. The fate of the team is in the students’ hands.”

The Warren city schools teams were lead by Delphi Engineer Travis Hoffman and many of the robotic student alumni from the Warren G Harding Delphi E.L.I.T.E. team.

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