The New Palestine High School Robotics Team Boogie Woogie won the State Championship and an Excellence Award during the competition March 23 in Indianapolis.
INDIANAPOLIS — The TechPoint Foundation for Youth hosted the Indiana State Robotics Championship at Lucas Oil Stadium March 23. The gathering was the largest Robotics State Championships in the country, with more than 350 robotics teams from elementary, middle and high schools across the state all trying to earn their way to the Robotics World Championships.
The World Championships are being held in Dallas for high school teams April 25-30 while the elementary and middle school events take place May 1-3.
Just like they’ve done all year long, a team from New Palestine High School (NPHS) was the cream of the crop — taking home top honors and several awards.
Team “Boogie Woogie” won the Excellence Award as the top overall team and the Tournament Champion Award for the Tournament Champion Alliance, as well as the Solar Division Award for their Champion Division Alliance. They also won the Skills 2nd Place Award for programming and driving individual challenge, and were recognized with a Previous Worlds Qualifier Award as a World invitation from an event prior to State.
Head coach of the NPHS team, Dave Post, said his teams partnered with Bunker Hill robotics and together it helped them win the Indiana Robotics State Championship.
“I’ve been coaching the New Pal team since 2015 after retirement from my 30 year career at Delco/Delphi,” Post said. “The Bunker Hill team is coached by Brad Nord, one of my past coworkers at Delco/Delphi so the team alliance made it even more special for Brad and I.”
Post also sent out a special thanks to NPHS assistant coaches Dan Ginther, Brandon Wilson and Tim Tarplee for working with the students all year.
“It was a great day for these students who work hard all year to develop their robots,” Post said.
Another NPHS team called “I’m a Banana” will also go to Worlds. They are going based on winning a Double Qualifier Filler Award for Teams invited based on their State Skills Ranking.
Team “Dysfunctional” from Greenfield-Central High School won a Tournament Semi-Finalist Award as the Tournament Champion semi-finalist alliance, and has qualified for the World Championships along with team “Fibonacci” and team “Exothermic” — who won a Double Qualifier Filler Award for Teams invited based on their State Skills Ranking.
The other county teams who won at state and moving on include elementary teams, “Pokébots” from the Montessori Science Academy, New Palestine, who won the Design Award for most effective and efficient robot design process; The “Flying Pigs” from New Palestine Intermediate School who won the Create Award for robot with creative engineering solution; and “The Floating Hotdogs” from the School of Hard Knocks in Greenfield, who won the Double Qualifier Award for Filler Teams invited based on their State Skills Ranking.
The lone middle school teams moving on from the county is the “Glow Botz” from New Palestine Junior High School, who won the Teamwork 4th award for Teamwork Alliance competition.
The objective of the State Robotics Initiative (SRI) is to provide a hands-on, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning opportunity to every Indiana student through an economical, entry-level robotics platform.
