The Glenfield College Robotics Team 2017
Over the past weekend, 70 teams from across New Zealand competed at Massey University for the honour of being the Champions of New Zealand.
The Vex Competition was started in 2006, and the first World Championships were held in 2007; It is now the largest robotic completion in the world with over 30 countries, 15000 teams and 1,000,000 students participating in 2016. The numbers are expected to grow to 2,000,000 students in 2017. The purpose of the programme is to produce students who will embrace STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects as a career path through competition.
Glenfield College has a proud history in this competition, having been founder members in 2008. Since then, we have achieved many accolades and titles including twice winning the top New Zealand award, the Excellence Award (2013 and 2015) and also on the world stage we have gained Educate, Build and Amaze awards, achieving the pinnacle of being awarded the World Excellence Award in 2015. Mr David Aston, TIC of Robotics, was also inducted into the ‘International Hall of Fame’ as Teacher of The Year, in 2016.
In 2017, we entered three teams in the competition:
Hemant Toora and Jackson Woodbury (2918E)
Adam McIntyre and Joshua Green (2918F)
Matthew Steyn and Cameron Selby (2918C)
The one award so far alluding the school was that of National Tournament Champion, a title bestowed upon the best driver:robot combination. The teams had targeted this award this year and reaped the rewards for their strategic approach when the combinations of Hemant/Jackson and Adam/Joshua, competing as two of the teams in a three-team alliance, triumphed over all others.
These two teams have now qualified to travel to the World Championships in Louisville, Kentucky, USA and will go head to head against the best 500 teams in the world in the quest for the ultimate prize of the World Tournament Champions. This will be our school’s sixth visit to the ‘Worlds’, and since 2008 our involvement in this competition has seen members of the programme travel not only to the USA (including Hawaii) but also to China, Australia and Samoa.
We would like to congratulate all three of our teams on their achievements and wish those team members travelling to the USA the very best of luck.
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