- Wood River Middle School
- Homepage
Wood River Middle School 7th Grade Robotics Team Wins State Tournament
On Saturday March 4th, the 7th grade Robotics team of Markus Pettinger and Hayden Wilson won the Idaho State VEX IQ Robocs Competition in Caldwell ID.
They were one of 20 teams from throughout Idaho that participated in the third ever Idaho VEX IQ Robotics Tournament. At the end of the tournament, Penger and Wilson were tournament champions in their first ever VEX IQ Robotics Tournament.
Now entering its 10th year, VEX Robotics will bring together the top student‐led robotics teams from around the world to Louisville, Kentucky, on April 19‐25, 2017. Wood River Middle School’s team will be 1 of 275 Middle School teams that has qualified to attend this event.
Sponsored by the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation, the VEX Robotics and VEX IQ Robotics Competition is the largest and fastest‐growing middle school and high school robotics program globally, with more than 16,000 teams from 40 countries playing in over 1,350 competitions worldwide. Each year, a new engineering challenge is presented in the form of a game. With guidance from mentors and coaches, students design and build robots to address the challenge and then put their creations to the test in a series of tournaments.
In addition to learning key engineering concepts, students gain valuable life skills including teamwork, perseverance, communicaon, collaboration, project management and critical thinking. Jeremy Silvis, Teacher and Robotics Coach from Wood River’s Middle School says, “These kids have worked extremely hard and put in many, many hours before and after school to get where they are. Their hard work paid off off and they are now the top Middle School VEX IQ Robotics team in the state.”
The Blaine County School District’s K‐12 robotics program (known at BCB Bots) was the first of its kind in the state of Idaho. Now in its eighth year at Wood River High School (WRHS) and its fifth year at Wood River Middle School, BCB Bots has participants from Elementary to High School.