The Osceola Science Charter School will be representing Osceola County at the VEX World Championships in robotics later this month. The school’s six teams that qualified for a place in the competition are the Combat Wombats, Techno Titans, Astrobots, Mouse Mafia, Cyber Tigers, and the Pink Skinks.
“I’m quite excited about it,” Gavin Ramos, Techno Titans member, said. “What I’m really looking forward to is seeing everybody and their robots and seeing how far VEX has come.”
Coach Christine Likeness, after teaching in Costa Rica and South Korea, created the robotics program at OSCS and has been the group’s coach and teacher for the past four years.
She expressed her pride in the students within the program and the amount of effort that they’ve put into their work and competitions.
“I’ve always been more nervous than the kids are for upcoming competitions, because I know what they can accomplish, and I know how much hard work they’ve put into things, and I really want them to perform their best.” Likeness said.
Some of her students said they are eager to implement the strategies they’ve learned from the previous competitions into the World Championships, held in Texas. from ensuring their robots stay within limits to working on their interviewing skills.
“Our interviews have been a lot better than at the beginning of the year,” Mouse Mafia member Andrea Torres said, “As for general teamwork… we have a system now in place.”
Similar to the mission of the VEX Championships, Osceola Science Charter School’s Robotics program works to ensure that the students are familiar with programming, sensors, and automation, as well as developing a foundation in critical computational thinking skills. They focus on teamwork and realworld techniques needed to help students succeed in their future careers.
“They all came back more motivated and talked about the strategies they want to implement for the next competition,” Likeness said. “It isn’t about winning or losing, it’s about what you can learn from each competition.”
Likeness said some of the teams have faced setbacks with modifications and troubleshooting in the Iowa national competition, but it only made the students more excited to take what they’ve learned to the next stage.
“I learned a lot throughout my years,” said Cyber Tigers’ member Ayoub Boutserfil, “A loss doesn’t mean you can’t win later. It’s not about how you fall, it’s how you get back up.”
Each student expressed how every competition helped them grow more as an individual. They also stated that they’ve learned to focus on practicing for their upcoming competitions, especially when it comes to malfunctions, so that they can make their necessary modifications in a timely manner.
“If we get good practice in, we’ll be able to quickly make changes that we couldn’t before,” Julien Wong of the Combat Wombat team said.
The VEX Robotics World Championship, which will take place April 25 to May 4, brings together thousands of students from around the globe each year. Their focus is to help students apply the knowledge they’ve learned in their classrooms to the arena.
“I’m excited for it.” Isaac Osorio, Astrobots member, said. “It’s the final stage.”
Likeness stated that her and the mentors will head out to Dallas with the robots on the April 28 with the students following behind them on the 29th, giving them a day before the start of their competition. She also plans to share the live webcast of the event so that the students back home will be able to cheer on their peers. The link to the webcast is: https://www. vexworlds.tv/#/channels/all.
