High school students Josiah Armstrong-Allen, Christopher Christy, Sarah Harcum, Aedyn Josselin, and Evelynn Mumper spent months preparing for the competitions by designing and programming their custom-built robots. Coached by high school science teacher John Thuahnai, our students put their engineering skills to the test in robot-building as they worked together on a variety of creative solutions to this year's challenges.
MSD participated in their first Robotics tournament of the year on Saturday, Feb. 5 at the South Hagerstown High School where they placed 31 out of 43 teams. The competition was a fun learning experience for our students and was a great way to prepare for the national tournament the following week.
Hosted by The Robotics Education & Competition Foundation in partnership with the NTID Regional STEM Center, the national tournament was in its fourth year featuring 21 teams from schools and programs of the Deaf who competed in a series of robotics challenges. This year's tournament was held virtually and was live-streamed on YouTube, allowing our students and staff the opportunity to learn more about robotics as they watched the competition and cheered on our team from their classrooms.
Through a videophone, teams had four matches to play to qualify for the single elimination tournament. Our Orioles were on a winning streak, winning all four matches and were ranked in first place for the entire day headed into the tournament bracket. However, MSD did not make it past the first round of the single elimination tournament and ended up in 8th place overall. The Texas School for the Deaf won the tournament, and MSD won the Amazing Robot award!
Congratulations to our Robotics Team for a great performance!