Henryville Robotics Team to compete in state finals

Nov. 30—HENRYVILLE — A few years ago, with the popularity of robotics in schools all over the country on the rise, Henryville Elementary started its own team to give children a different experience.

Henryville children from grades fourth to seventh are able to join the robotics team and compete against other schools across the state.

Their robotics team is operated through VEX Robotics, a program for elementary through college students.

The students are put into teams and given designs for their robots to complete games and tasks with.

"We're trying to let people know that robotics is a real thing," said Travis Lovins, Henryville's robotics head coach. "If you ever go to a robotics competition, you can understand that it's exciting and these kids are learning so much from it."

Each team is given a kit to make their robot with and the students have to program it to do the tasks assigned for the competition.

When designing, Lovins encourages the students to make their own design to further explore their creativity and ideas.

This year's first competition was on Nov. 18 in Shelbyville, where two teams finished in the finals and one qualified for the state finals. They will be going to the state finals in Indianapolis early next year to compete at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Robotics, much like other sports, is about teamwork and overcoming problems against other teams.

"Robotics, it kind of puts you in a different headspace versus sports," Lovins said. "I love to see the breakthrough when they are able to take what they've created and see how it performs against other teams."

When they are done competing, the two teams talk with each other and ask them how they did certain things with their robot, Lovins added.

"It would be like if a basketball team played each other and afterwards they went and talked to each other like 'Oh, what drills do you do?'" Lovins said. "It's something about that camaraderie that's a little bit different than sports."

Every spring when the season is over, children from Henryville Elementary will be sent home with a flyer that will have a questionnaire for the students who are interested in joining.

After the questionnaire is filled out, the coach will decide who gets to go to tryouts for the next season. This year, they had 70 students in the tryouts and only 30 made it to the team.

For tryouts this school year they did the spaghetti marshmallow challenge. In the challenge, the students were split up into groups randomly and were given 25 pieces of spaghetti, a marshmallow and a yard of masking tape.

With those supplies the teams had to create a tower with the marshmallow on top and use all the supplies they were given.

"After they finished, we didn't care about how tall they built it," Lovins said. "We just watched and saw how they interacted with each other and how they came up with their ideas."

When they were done with the challenge, they interviewed each child and asked them who came up with the idea and who was the most responsible. Based on their answers, they decided who would make the team.

The team has their next competitions in December where they will be going to Rock Creek and Columbus.

With the help from other teachers, Lovins wants to expand the program into the high school and have high school students compete in robotics competitions as well.

"We want to keep expanding on this and exploring more options," Lovins said. "Henryville is known as the place for the band or the basketball team, it would be nice if we were the robotics school."