Mayo primary school wins award at robotics World Championship in Dallas

The robotics team from the Mayo primary school St Joseph's Ballinrobe will certainly receive a memorable homecoming. The team is returning from Texas with an award for sportsmanship in their luggage.

"We're the first and only Irish primary school to have won an award at the VEX Robotics World Championship-not just once, but twice," says St Joseph's teacher Edel Roche, who coached the team, together with Sean Flannelly: Last year, we won the InnoVid award, and this year, the Sportsmanship Award. Winning this award was a fantastic achievement. The students describe it as the trip of their lifetime."

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Only about eight or nine awards were presented in total at the championship, so being recognized in this way was very special. "The award celebrates teamwork, honesty, resilience, and the ability to communicate effectively-even across language barriers. Our students impressed the judges with their positive attitude, adaptability, and the way they interacted with referees, judges, and teams from other countries, sometimes using Google Translate or diagrams to bridge language gaps. Many consider sportsmanship the most important award because it recognizes essential life skills," explains Roche, speaking to The Mayo News on the way home from the States.

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It was a long road that led to Dallas for St Joseph's. Roche, Flannelly and the students building their robot last October. The regional competition was in January, nationals in February, and then they had about two months to prepare for Dallas. Last year, they were the only Irish school to travel, but this year two Donegal schools and one Cork school joined them. 

Nine student were able to make the journey to America, together with their parents. The event brought together 400 teams from over 53 countries, and St Joseph's was placed in the Arts Division, which had 87 teams in total. VEX Robotics is all about designing, building, and programming a robot to complete a unique challenge that changes every year.

"Our school has participated for the past three years, and this time the challenge was called Rapid Relay," states Roche. "The students had to build a robot capable of picking up yellow soft balls and shooting them into targets.

Points were scored based on how many targets were hit and how many switches were activated. Importantly, teams had to collaborate with another robot, so it was about working together to maximize points, not just competing against each other."

Roche and her colleague Sean Flannelly served as the VEX coordinators for their school. They coach the students, introduce them to programming, and provide an example robot to get them started.

After that, they step back and let the students take charge, guiding and supporting them as needed, especially in developing their game strategy. They also organized the after-school robotics club, where they started with about 35 kids. After six weeks, they selected a team of 11, and nine of them travelled with the two coaches to Dallas.

"We're thrilled with the recognition and are planning a homecoming celebration at the school tomorrow evening. The whole experience has been incredibly rewarding for everyone involved, and we're grateful for the support from our sponsors and the wider school community."

The names of St Joseph's team are as follows: Rian Hennelly, Kayla Gilrane, Aoibhín Kelly, Matthew O’Toole, Adam Heneghan, Jacob Connolly, Emilia Slowik, Hazel deRhen, Roland Szabo Roche. And Jack Daly and Andrew Gentrey are also on the team but didn’t travel to Dallas.

The homecoming for the team will be tomorrow (Saturday, May 17) at 5pm at St Joseph's primary school Ballinrobe).

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