Morris School robotics team holding first VEX robotics competition in the province

Morris School robotics team can start the year off with pride as their move to be the only VEX robotics team in the province has not only influenced other schools to take up VEX, but they will hold the province’s first VEX robotics competition later this year.

“It’s certainly exciting and I think it’s also fitting, we are the first Manitoba VEX team, so it makes sense for us to host the first competition,” said technology teacher and Morris VEX robotics coach Joey Tiede. “We’re really looking forward to having some local competition.”

Morris School has been involved with VEX robots for almost two years. Its robotics team started under the guidance of then technology teacher J.P. Jamieson in 2023, who also started a robotics team in Carman as a teacher there. Jamieson is currently at St. James Collegiate in Winnipeg where he is working with students on drones, but hopes to introduce VEX there too.

Jamieson started Morris students off with small mini-Sumo robots, which were designed to push other robots out of a ring. Last year, Jamieson added VEX robots (which push and complete tasks), from a kit and a ring donated by the Manitoba Association of Education Technology Leaders (MAETL). The kit is shared annually with schools across the province if they request them as part of the association’s lending library.

MAETL is made up of school division technology system leaders that consist of educators and IT professionals from across Manitoba that promote and share technology with schools.

“I think that (Morris having a VEX tournament) is excellent. We had created an initial VEX robotics kit for this purpose, and I was just trying to kind of get this going in Manitoba, and it seems like it’s worked. It’s catching on,” said MAETL president Charlie Marks, noting the idea for a VEX kit was brought to the association two years ago by a member.

Marks said Morris School was the first, and is currently the only school, to have used the kit which he said encourages STEM in schools. He urges school divisions to apply with their local MAETL members to acquire the VEX kit.

Tiede agrees with Marks that VEX promotes STEM in schools. He said robotics is focused on innovation as the kids code, develop, and plan strategies when building and competing with their robots, which he said will help them in the future.

“We’re really focused on innovation, right? VEX it’s all about innovation. It’s all about the design process. And these are skills that are essential in many different STEM fields,” he said.

The Morris Robo Rodeo competition will be held on Dec. 5 and while the details have not been finalized yet, Tiede said the fact that other schools are following Morris’ lead in getting VEX robots is promising.

“We’re very hopeful that we will have some competition this upcoming year,” he said.

Schools in Prairie Rose School Division and Grant Park High School in the Winnipeg School Division are looking at or have already bought VEX robot kits.

Grant Park High School computer sciences teacher Carolyn Evans Helmer thinks it’s great how Morris School has taken the lead in bringing VEX to Manitoba.

“They’ve taken on that leadership role of being the first ones to say, ‘Hey, let’s do this thing.’ And that’s making it so that other people can now join in. So, I give them lots of credit for that,” she said.

Evans Helmer introduced robotics to her school in 2019 prior to COVID and her team grew from a few kids to about 25 or so students today. She said her robotics students have been competing in Skills Canada competitions through the years winning medals and placing second at Skills Canada National last May.

She said one of the differences between the Skills Canada competitions and the VEX tournaments is that Skills Canada only lets two students compete, while VEX allows for more thus giving more students the opportunity to grow their skills.

Evans Helmer had always wanted to try VEX with her students, but they seemed more interested in the engineering side of robotics rather than the competition side as Skills Canada is not about robots battling each other and strategy, rather it is about robots performing tasks.

It wasn’t until Jamieson approached Evans Helmer a couple of years ago about having a VEX tournament that she got the push she needed to get her students involved with VEX.

Last spring, she introduced VEX to her students and now they are preparing for the Morris Robo Rodeo. She said some of her students have spent 200 hours of their own time working on their robots.

Evans Helmer, who lives in St Pierre-Jolys, said her school division is planning on having a VEX tournament in February with Morris School in attendance.

“I really, really hope that it takes off and that lots of different schools and school divisions around the province join in so we can have a real system here,” she said about her hope for the future of VEX in the province.

While the Morris School robotics team doesn’t have MAETL’s VEX robots anymore, the continued support from local sponsors, fundraising, and grant money has paid for the team’s nine robots (varying in price from $1,500 to $2,000) and the team’s $2,000 ring.

While last year there were two Morris VEX teams, Blue Bombur and Team Philip (Blue Bombur competed in multiple VEX competitions in the United States and won a number of medals), this year Tiede hopes to create three teams so more students can participate.

While Tiede has not yet announced to this year’s robotics students that they will be hosting the first provincial VEX competition, he expects they’ll be very excited.

And while the team won’t be able to travel this year to the U.S. to compete as they did in the past (the school board has banned all U.S. travel), Tiede said the team is preparing to go to Calgary next year to compete in the Mecha Mayhem event from Feb. 12 to 14.

This will be the fifth year for Mecha Mayhem and it is expected more than 250 teams worldwide will be competing.

“That’s actually Canada’s largest VEX competition,” said Tiede.

“It would be lovely if we could have something (like that in Manitoba) that’s…equally big. I mean, why not? Why not dream big, you know?” said Evans Helmer with a smile.

As for what the future holds for the Morris robotics team, Tiede agrees with Evans Helmer in wanting to see a thriving VEX robotics scene in the province.

“Through our opportunity to participate in competitions in the United States, we’ve seen what a competition scene can look like. So, we want to help build that in Manitoba,” he said.

The school is in need of volunteers and judges for its Dec. 5 tournament. People who are interested in participating should email Tiede at jtiede@rrvsd.ca. The Morris Robo Rodeo will run from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the school.