When two Sparks Elementary School teachers wanted to see if any fifth-graders were interesting in forming a robotics club last fall, they were inundated with almost 50 applications.
Jill Crowley and Beth Ryan chose nine students who have met once a week ever since to learn how to build robots and program them to move.
The two Sparks teams then took their handmade robots to county and state competitions where they kept winning — and winning.
On April 14, the Sparks robot whiz kids, their parents and teachers will travel to Louisville, Ky., to participate in the VEX Robotics World Championship that lasts through April 16.
Anyone who wants to follow Sparks teams' status during the VEX Robotics World Championship can go to http://www.robotevents.com/re-viqc-15-1985.html and click on the results tab. Those interested may follow their favorite team by downloading the VEX Via app, which is updated in real time.
Sparks, the only elementary school in Baltimore County to have Vex Robotics teams, will be among 89 elementary school teams from around the world competing in Kentucky. There will be only one other Maryland elementary school in the world contest, VEX Robotics officials said. That team is from Ridge Elementary School in St. Mary's County.
Some might call the Sparks club's fast rise to fame beginners' luck, but fifth-grader Luke Williams summed up the journey from novice to world-class this way. "It was a lot of hard work, but mostly a lot of fun. We all just thought we'd learn a lot this year. We never thought we'd win."
The Sparks teams — one with four boys and one with three girls and two boys — each made a robot from a box of 850 parts supplied by the robotics competition sponsor, VEX.
The students then practiced a game with their robots that simulates the exact game and requisite robotic skills that are tested and timed at the competition.
The game's goal, played on a 4-by-8-foot field, is to have a robot take plastic 3-inch blocks from one side of the field and stack them onto bases on the other side. Points are given for blocks stacked and for moving blocks into a scoring zone near the bases. Each game lasts 60 seconds and a team driver uses a remote control to maneuver the robot.
The Sparks all-boys team of Luke Williams, Nicholas Sackleh, Sean Park and Patrick Guo built three different robots before constructing a winner. Their robot has a claw to pick up the blocks after its wide bottom pushes blocks near the bases and the scoring zone of the field.
The boys said they knew they had a good design during a competition when another school's robot didn't first move blocks close to the base, but picked them up one at a time.
The other Sparks team's design features two paddle-like arms that squeeze together to grip the blocks from the sides. The base also has arms to gather up and move the blocks.
"When the arms sort of fell down instead of going straight, we used rubber bands to make them stronger," said Lizzie Lopez. Team members Nick Janney, Cole Borror, Harshini Arumugam and Carly Ross all worked on the design and everybody takes turns driving the robot.
At the Louisville competition, each Sparks team will be paired with another team to work together to see how many points their robots could score in one minute.
In all, each Sparks team will be partnered with 10 teams.
"It's so cool to think we might work with a team from someplace like China," said Nicholas Sackleh at a recent pre-worlds practice.
Another contest using the same scoring format keeps the robot on autopilot, with no driver.
Feeding the feeder
The Sparks teachers said they started the club to get kids ready for next year when they can join Hereford Middle School's thriving Robotics Club.
Crowley's son, now an eighth-grader, has been in robotics at the middle school since he started there.
Hereford's technology education teacher and robotics chair, Chris Putnam, said he has 60 students on 15 teams this year.
Two of the middle school's teams qualified for the World Championship in Kentucky. Seventh-graders Nick DeSantis, Andrew Zhu and Andrew Brown form one team. The other, which ended up as the top-scoring middle school team in Maryland, comprises sixth-graders Julia Long, Julie Girodie, and Zoe Hsieh, and seventh-grader Grace Noone.
"I started robotics here in 2009 because I knew Hereford High School had a great robotics program," Putnam said. "We are a feeder program for them and now it looks like Sparks is a feeder for us."
Hereford High School's Robotics Club, chaired by technology teacher Michael Doddo, also sent a team to Kentucky this year. Juniors Steven DiBerardino, Will Fern and Joe Meske already had won the state programming award as well as an excellence award for outstanding team and robot.
"The Hereford Zone is a unique part of the county and it's unique in its robotics success," said Douglas Handy, coordinator of the county school system's Offices of Career and Technology Education. "We are pleased Sparks made it to the world competition in their first year. The fact these schools feed each other is a model we like to see."