GRIDLEY, CA (MPG) – Friday, February 14^th, Vern Hartman, program chairman and Gridley Lion, had the special honor of awarding the Wilson After School Programs Vex Team a check in the amount of $100 to help support their trip to the state championship competition in Sacramento.

VEX IQ is a robotics platformed designed to tie into the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program for younger students and their teachers, focusing on grades 4-8 and progressing to higher divisions. Students design and build robots, complete with computers, motors, a battery for power and easy to assemble building blocks to perform certain tasks. “It’s like LEGOs” says Vex Team member Mason Vattaglia (9). His partner, Abigail Boyan (10) says, “It’s really easy!”

Vex is a part of Gridley’s Wilson After School Program and has been participating in the VEX program for two years now. Advisor and Teacher, Mrs. Mary Ellen Hart, who supervises the program says that, “Kids that don’t know anything about it can join in and they’ll find a part of it that they really enjoy.”  She continues, “They learn how to engineer, they learn how to code… they learn how to journal and keep notes on what’s going on.” Skills that will no doubt be valuable in the students’ futures.

Butte County Office of Education has invested heavily in the program, supplying schools throughout the county with kits. According to Mrs. Hart, each kit builds one robot, but many of the parts are interchangeable and can be used to modify the design of the robot. And that is exactly what our Wilson School Vex Team has done to send them to the State Competition on March 15^th, 2020.

Between the months of September and December of 2019, the 8 members VEX team, comprised of 4 - 2 person partnerships competed with area schools and organizations to prove their design skills and robotic handling. Mrs. Hart says that the tournament is “a collaboration instead of a competition.” Two partners from two schools work together with their robots to rack up points – the board total score goes towards each school’s total point tally. Each partner has 30 seconds to work with the robot, with each round just 1 minute long.

This year the goal was to take the specified robot by the VEX IQ challenge and modify it to pick up balls, stack cubes or barrels – each with a different point allotment. Cubes were worth 20 pts versus 1 pt for balls, so our Wilson students identified what they needed to change on their robot in order to be able to pick the cubes up for more points. The result – Wilson’s Vex Team came in first for the Elementary School Division taking home two awards and securing their spot in the State Challenge. “If we win that, we get to go to Kentucky!” says Abigail Boyan, for the national competition.

Program Chairman, Lion Vern Hartman, who helped secure the program for Wilson School and supply the team with needed funding, said that he was in awe of what the students could do and that the Lions wanted to make sure they had funding and support them on their competition day. The Lions Club donation will help them with lunches and other needs while the VEX Team attempts to take the win at VEQ IQ and move on to nationals.