MANISTEE — “I think I always liked playing with LEGO-type things and being creative,” said Dalton Diep, Manistee Catholic Central seventh grader. “When you add in robots and things then yeah, I’m going to sign up.”
Diep’s not alone in that feeling, and in its fourth year of existence, MCC’s robotics program is a popular activity among students, with 22 kids on the elementary and middle school teams.
Ellen Kosmowski helped get the program off the ground and currently serves as one of the coaches. She said she ran the idea of starting a robotics program past the now head coach Laura Cameron and it’s been picking up steam ever since.
“I thought it would be nice for the kids to have more opportunities here in a rural area. I did a little research with another parent and we were able to find this program,” Kosmowski said. “I brought it to Mrs. Cameron and she was able to help get us into the school with the program. … We’ve had a couple teams go to state. The kids love it.”
The students design and build robots which are used to accomplish a number of tasks on a course. The more tasks a robot accomplishes, the more points the team is awarded.
“Hanging is worth 6 points. You can high hang — that’s 10 points,” said fifth grader Phin Kiesckowski. “Each ball placed into the middle overpass is 2 points and then to clear out one end zone is 5 points and if you clear out both of them you get 10.”
Seventh graders Sophia Schaub and Cheyenne Martin came up just short of qualifying for the state meet by placing second in the Teamwork Challenge during a competition at Woodland School in Traverse City on Jan. 29.
The duo has one more chance to qualify during today’s competition in Elk Rapids. Schaub thinks she and Martin have a good chance of qualifying.
“I just need to calm down,” she said. “I like going faster, but Cheyenne’s very good at going slow and being controlled. I just need to learn how to do that.”
Martin said she was interested in robotics because she likes to work with her hands.
“I’m more into cars and stuff, and I asked (Schaub) to do it with me because she did it in third grade,” Martin said.
Schaub said Martin didn’t have to twist her arm to get her to join.
“I love writing notes and I have lots of LEGOs at home,” Schaub said. “I like building things, too.”
A lot of work goes into keeping the robots in working order.
“We try and test our robot to see if anything’s broken,” Martin said. “If it does break, we try to make something better. … The plow falls off a lot.”
Sixth grader Trinity Hurford is in her third year of robotics. She said it is a great opportunity to both socialize and learn.
“I wanted to join because mostly all my friends are in it and I wanted to hang out with them, and I’m also interested in robots,” she said. “I think they’re pretty cool, so I wanted to learn how to program them and build them.”
Abigail Sell is on Team Traffic Cones with Hurford. This is Sell’s first season participating.
“I was interested in robots and driving, so I thought it would be cool to join,” she said. “I’d be able to get that experience.”
Riley Sturgeon said he and Diep have long had an interest in building things, so robotics is a perfect fit.
“We always were interested in gadgets,” Sturgeon said. “During the summer (Diep) and I went to the same daycare and we’d just build gadgets out of LEGOs and all the pieces that we could.”
Cy Kosmowski became interested in robotics after seeing the television show “BattleBots.” He enjoys programming the robots to complete tasks autonomously.
“The part I like is coding because I like just like to learn stuff about computers, how they work and how they can make other things work,” he said. “I’m really into physics and science and stuff like that, so I really like it. And I like driving because it’s just fun. It’s like a way to relax.”
Diep said there were not many competitions held this season due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it has still been a successful season.
“We practiced a lot,” he said. “We improve every year and that’s the goal.”
Sturgeon said he put a lot of work into his coding a building skills.
“Last year we improvised a robot. We didn’t go off of anything — we just built our own from scratch,” he said. “This year we did the same thing but we improved upon it because we had experience from last year and we have more experience with coding.”
Brennan Sturgeon enjoys building the bots more than driving them.
“(It’s more fun than driving) because you can design your own robot,” he said.
Aimee Zakrajsek, mother of Phin, Reid and Cade Kiesckowski, said the robotics program is a great benefit to the students.
“All of these kids love this program. … They are supervised, but they build these robots themselves,” Zakrajsek said. “Engineering, gears, motors, programming — they hook it up to a computer and program it. … They do it themselves. It’s fascinating. … I think they’ll continue to do this for years.”
Ellen Kosmowski said the robotics program has had good participation numbers since its inception.
“Sometimes we might have a couple more kids, but this is pretty good for a COVID year,” Kosmowski said. “Even last year when our tournaments were virtual, we still had a large amount of kids, which was exciting. Nothing’s going to stop them.”
Cameron said it is great to see the camaraderie between the different schools.
“We went to a competition and one boy, it was his first year. … He was by himself and his robot was spinning in circles,” she said. “If you don’t have your robot you don’t get any points for that round. After that, another boy from another school said, ‘I think I know what I can do to help you. Do you want to work on it?’
“… This is what we want to see out of our kids. We’re building our kids for our future,” Cameron continued. “We want them to be compassionate, helpful, understanding and problem solving, and that’s what this is.”
