These students love robotics so much they helped create a league

Just like football and soccer, the London District Catholic school board has formed a board-wide robotics league and is already seeing impressive results.

“This school board level robotics league concept is the first of its kind in Ontario as far as we know,” said St Joseph’s high school teacher Michelle Massaro, who took 14 members of her robotic team to the international championships in Texas last week.

Massaro, who teaches visual art, and chemistry teacher Kathy Cepo put together the first competitive robotics team in the Catholic board at St. Joseph’s, in St. Thomas, in 2012.

Each team gets a base robot kit from VEX – an organization that hosts robotics competitions designed to attract students to science, technology, engineering and math careers (STEM) – that comes with all the parts needed to build a bot.

Teams can order additional or more complicated parts, create parts themselves or change existing parts.

With help from their robotics-loving students last year, the two teachers convinced the school board to fund a board-wide robotics league with teams in each of its nine secondary schools in London and Oxford, Middlesex and Elgin counties.

“The students are so proud of having helped to develop the concept of this league and host and run the inaugural year,” Massaro said. “It’s unique in that it’s a competitive team that isn’t a sport but delivers so many of the incredibly meaningful experiences that are usually associated with sports.”

Competitions ran from September to January and culminated in a championship tournament in February with two champions: St. Thomas Aquinas students for robot skills and St. Joseph’s in head-to-head match play.

Important skills students acquire include learning to win and lose, as well as taking part in practices, strategizing and competing with teammates, Massaro said.

Grade 12 student Kayleigh Baker said she has been involved in robotics for six years.

“I like the group involvement and how open it is to all students no matter their skills level,” she said. “I started robotics when I was in Grade 6 and I knew nothing, but over the years I developed a lot of new skills, and worked with a bunch of new people.”

Her time spent on robotics teams has influenced her decision to study mechatronic engineering at Humber College where she will learn more about robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Building on their success in robotics earlier this month in Texas, their team was selected as the representatives of the Catholic board at Skills Ontario Competitions that took place this week in Toronto at the Congress Center where they placed first and second.

“We were the only London-area school to compete,” Massaro said.

The week prior, in Texas, they competed in the VEX Robotics World Championships.

The Texas event involved more than 800 teams from 50 different countries.

Ryder Denison and Curtis Cano, both 17 and in Grade 12, said after only one year on the robotics team, they were pleased with their level of success.

“It was our first year and made it to worlds,” Cano said.

For Ryder, one of the biggest take-aways from being on the team was unexpected.

“My public speaking has increased so much due to the amount of interviews and talking with people who I never met before,” he said. “I really recommend anyone going into high school that they join the robotics team.”

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