Game faces were on. Excitement was high. And play on the competition fields was fierce.
Inside the Arnold Pinkney East Professional Center in Cleveland on Wednesday, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s Robotics League competed for the FIRST Technical Challenge Teams, a qualifier for state.
"This is like March Madness style play," said Chelsey Kohn, director of the Tech Talent Pipeline for CMSD and Cleveland State University.
However, this specific event was the first for CMSD.
"We have never had a middle school robotics league before," said Kohn.
CMSD has had competitive high school robotics teams for more than a decade. But now, thanks to sponsorship from Google and MAGNET locally, the district expanded to middle school this year.
"It is a lot of momentum, and we’re just excited it’s happening," Kohn said.
News 5 has followed the growth of FIRST robotics at CMSD for years.
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Including earlier this year, when the district’s all-girls team became the first for a Northeast Ohio public school.
While many Northeast Ohio districts have FIRST robotics competition teams, it's rare for large urban districts, which makes the extension now to middle school even more exciting and significant for the students.
Kohn says the robotics league is so popular that there's a waitlist for the middle schools.
CMSD now has six high school teams, two of which won state last year: East Tech and John Marshall.
Kohn said one high school just had 100 students sign up for the robotics team. They can only roster 30 at competition.
The district hopes to expand the competitive robotics program to elementary schools with additional funding support.
On Wednesday, over 200 students representing 14 CMSD middle schools competed in the day-long event.
The top two teams advance to state, where it'll be the first time Cleveland is represented at that middle school competition.
It is a point of pride for students like Angelo Espendez, 14, an 8th grader at Valley View Boys Leadership Academy.
"It shows that Cleveland has a lot of opportunities," said Angelo.
He says he's grateful for the opportunity to do robotics and enjoys the challenges and teamwork.
"You can really be intuitive and creative," he said.
Angelo is confident his team will advance.
"Oh yeah, most definitely," he smiled. "We’re going to go to state,"
Jacobe Smith, one of the coaches for Valley View Boys Leadership Academy, said that he loves to see the young men having a great time, and he loves what the FIRST robotics program stands for.
"We're able to not use kids to build robots but use the robots to build kids," said Smith.
And Kohn said it also helps build the talent pipeline in Cleveland.
"It starts in middle school," she said. "They opt in or out in middle school. So, if you show them it’s fun to build, design, and program a robot then they’re going to be interested in those careers. But right now, they’re not thinking about that, it’s just fun!”
Kohn also said robotics learning is having an impact on students and their futures. She said high school students who compete in FIRST Robotics have the highest college-going STEM degree rates out of any programming the district offers.
The two CMSD teams advancing to state after today's competition are the Valley View Boys Leadership Academy and the Douglas MacArthur Girls Leadership Academy.
