This year’s game is VEX Round Up. Students, with guidance from their teachers and mentors, use innovative robotics technology to address each year’s challenge and work together in strategic allilances to score the most points. In addition to having a great time and building amazing robots, participation in the VEX Robotics Competition helps students learn teamwork and other valuable life skills.

As a winner of the Cleveland VEX competition on March 5, the YTA/CMSD Max Hayes High School VEX team has won the opportunity to compete in the VEX Robotics World Championship, to be held on April 14-16, 2011, at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at the Walt Disney World Resort, near Orlando, Florida. The three-day championship event has been scheduled to coincide with National Robotics Week and will bring together top middle school, high school and college robotics teams from around the world to celebrate their accomplishments.

The VEX Robotics Competition is the largest and fastest growing middle and high school robotics program globally, with more than 2,600 teams from 20 countries playing in over 200 tournaments worldwide. Local VEX Robotics Competition events are being held in many different cities, states and countries. Events are held worldwide and are being added every week.

For information about the VEX Robotics platform, visit www.vexrobotics.com.

The Red Dragons, FIRST Team 1270, are returning for their eighth season to the FIRST Buckeye Regional Robotics Competition.  Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center will provide the venue for the Buckeye Regional competition, which is celebrating its 10^th year in 2011.  Event dates for this year’s Buckeye Regional are Thursday through Saturday, April 7-9.  This is the final week of regional play.

The Red Dragons will then travel to the FIRST Championship at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri on April 27-30. 

The FIRST regional competition season unfolds over a six-week period from early March through mid-April. Approximately 52,000 students, comprising 2,075 teams, will compete in 49 regional championships and 9 district competitions.

As members of FIRST team 1270, YTA students not only receive high-level technology training, work side by side with outstanding engineering professionals, and experience the thrill of regional and national competition.  They also receive access to more than 850 scholarship opportunities totaling in excess of $14 million from leading educational institutions.

Good luck to the Red Dragons in 2011!

The Dragons traveled to Orlando, Florida, to participate in the March 11-13 tournament, one of more than 40 regional competitions held throughout the country and in other nations. They will compete again next week on their ‘home court’ at Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center in the FIRST Buckeye Regional event, March 25-27.

This is not the first time the YTA Red Dragons have triumphed at the Florida Regional tournament. In 2005, they took runner-up honors. In 2007, they also won the prestigious Judges’ Award, in addition to winning regional honors that took them to the 2007 FIRST National Championship competition in Atlanta, Georgia, where they finished as national finalists. And, returning to Florida in 2008, they won their first Chrysler Team Spirit Award at that competition.

Much of the Red Dragons’ enthusiasm stemmed from their very vocal support of FIRST Team 1251, the TechTigers of Atlantic Technical Magnet High School from Coconut Creek, Florida, long-time alliance partners and co-winners of the 2007 regional competition (Team 1251 also took regional honors at this year’s Florida competition). The FIRST Florida Regional judges were so impressed with the Red Dragons’ support of Team 1251, and its overall enthusiasm (despite having been eliminated from semifinal play), that they voted to give the Red Dragons the Chrysler Team Spirit Award.

The Chrysler Team Spirit Award “celebrates extraordinary enthusiasm and spirit through exceptional partnership and teamwork.” Thanks to the FIRST Florida Regional judges for recognizing what we already know: that the YTA Red Dragons have what it takes to compete successfully in the FIRST Robotics program!

Visit www.vexrobotics.com to learn about the VEX Robotics Design System. Click here to obtain information about the 2010 competition challenge (entitled “Clean Sweep”), view animations about the game, and find rules and documentation.

If you are interested in volunteering for this event, please contact:

Charlena Pierce, Academic Coordinator
Youth Technology Academy
Cuyahoga Community College
(216) 987-3274
Charlena.Pierce@tri-c.edu

Both technical and non-technical volunteers are welcome!

The Red Dragons return to their ‘home’ field on March 25-27 for the ninth annual FIRST Buckeye Regional competition at Cleveland State University’s Wolstein Center. The event is free and open to the public. Practice rounds take place on Thursday, with qualifying rounds beginning on Friday and running through Saturday morning. Elimination rounds and the finals for the regional championship take place on Saturday afternoon.

FIRST was founded in 1989 to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. Based in Manchester, NH, the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit public charity designs accessible, innovative programs that motivate young people to pursue education and career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, while building self-confidence, knowledge, and life skills.