Grant Middle School robotics team wins Design Award at VEX Robotics World Championship

For some of the students on Grant Middle School's robotics team, getting the opportunity to travel to the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas, Texas last week was their first time on a plane or outside the state of Ohio.

However, the excitement did not stop there as one of Grant's three teams walked away with a Design Award in its division: a first-ever win for the school at the world competition.

Reagan Tway, Jakob Adams, Macey Harper and Lucy Johnston, better known as Team 2281X or "GMS Star Lord," won the award  the Opportunity Division representing Grant Middle.

Robotics and STEM teachers Kristin Tope and Jessica Creamer led the team to the competition and to victory, and they both noted their pride in the students receiving such an award while competing against 800 other teams from all over the world.

“This is our first award received at worlds, so this was a first for us too, but that specific team that won has been outstanding out year,” Tope said.

The group dominated at the VEX IQ Challenge State Championship here in Marion in March, with the students winning four of the seven top awards available to them. Winning the award in the world competition was a continuation of this success.

“We knew – we knew they were good, but you stop and think, ‘In the scheme of the world, how good are we?’ And they won, and they are that good,” Creamer said.

Creamer and Tope believe what drew the judges' attention to the school's winning team, Team X, was the way the group overcame a challenge after the state competition where a substitute teacher unknowingly dismantled the team's robot when Tope was out sick for the day.

"The Tuesday after states we came in and we went to our shelf and realized our robot was gone," Johnston said.

"We were, like, just in pure shock in that moment," she continued.

Creamer said rather than panicking, the students were able to rebuild their robot and use the opportunity to learn how to problem-solve.

“When we realized what happened the next day, it was like, ‘Okay, this is robotics.’ I said, ‘You need to pull out your engineering notebook and figure out how to rebuild your competition robot from your engineering notebook, which is why science and engineers keep the documentation that they do,’” she explained.

“That just shows the caliber of kids that we’re dealing with - they didn’t freak out. They didn’t get defeated. They overcame and did what they needed to do to go compete at worlds.”

The students told the judges about their experience figuring out how to rebuild their robot to make it even better than it was the first time in a competition interview, impressing the judges with their original design which allowed them to rebuild in a timely manner and learn from the experience.

This made the world championship win all the sweeter knowing starting over helped them on the road to success on the world stage.

"We were super excited. We just all started jumping up and down and screaming because we never thought we could do this, but it was really exciting," Harper said.

When they weren't winning world championships, the three teams of Grant Middle School students got to visit the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and socialize with fellow middle school-aged students from all over the world.

There was even an opportunity for Marion County schools to team up as Grant 8th grader Leah Price worked with Pleasant Middle's Emma Bradac for a team-based activity.

“It was the best group of kids we could have possibly taken, just a phenomenal group of humans, and they were great. They were great the whole time,” Tope said.

“It was a great experience for them all the way around. It was very rewarding for us as teachers to watch them go compete at such a high level in an event that they were all really in their element,” Creamer agreed.

Tryouts are already underway for next year's team at Grant Middle School, and Johnston and Harper felt relieved Wednesday after finding out they successfully secured a spot for next year's team.

Tope and Creamer also wanted to thank their sponsors at the Marion County Youth Foundation, Grant Middle PTO, Marion Country Club / Buckeye Furniture, Kiwanis, Jeff Johnston, Marion Education Association, Krista Dendinger, STAR Turbine, Beth Pfeifer and the Marion Community Foundation, noting they're always looking for more help to make their team a success.

Story by: Sophia Veneziano (740) 564 - 5243 | sveneziano@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Grant Middle won Design Award at VEX Robotics World Championship