It was an awesome showing for the Awesome in Powassan team at the 10th annual First Lego League regional robotics competition in North Bay.
The students finished second overall and qualified to take part in the provincial championships in Toronto Jan. 18 and 19, 2025.
This marked Awesome in Powassan’s third appearance at the North Bay event, and each year the students have made it to the provincial championships.
The first year, Awesome in Powassan won the Innovation Award, while last year saw the students win the overall regional championship.
Of the 21 schools and organizations from across northeastern Ontario in North Bay, four were from the Almaguin Highlands. In addition to Awesome in Powassan, the Sundridge Huskies from Sundridge Centennial Public School, the Dragon Designers from Magnetawan Public School and 250 Clark from Powassan represented the Highlands.
This year's tourney marked the debut of the 250 Clark squad after Mike Rowe led the creation of the team.
Rowe, of Nipissing Township, has a daughter who plays hockey and was looking for his son to get involved in an activity. With help from Powassan’s events coordinator Kathie Hogan, Rowe had a team in place a week after the start of the school year.
The boys are students at Maple Ridge Public School and South Shore Education Centre and range in age from eight to 11 years old.
Rowe said the first couple of weeks were awkward as the boys got to know one another — but as they started working on creating their robot, which they called Clark, they became a team of six.
“They are very much individuals who have a common goal,” Rowe said. “They worked on each of their strengths. For example, Robbie (Robert Lindquist) is dynamite with coding. Just try and tear the tablet from his hands. Some are better builders and others are better designers”.
All the teams taking part in the regional competition are required to have their robots complete 14 problems or challenges, each lasting two minutes and 30 seconds.
They work on those problems with their robots in their respective communities, trying to perfect the moves as much as possible before the event, where the robots go through their motions for the public and judges.
Rowe said when the robot kit arrives, there are no instructions on how to put it together — that’s where innovation enters.
“There was a lot of trial and error for the boys,” Rowe said. “You have all these parts and you have to figure out what to do. You try a program — if it works, great. If not, it’s back to the drawing board to try and fix it”.
Rowe said it was a bit overwhelming at first, but that quickly changed as they broke down the problems into smaller segments and achieved results.
Those results include coding information into small motors of the robot that propel the wheels forward or backward.
The coding could include simple commands, such as how many revolutions the team wants the robot's wheels to make before it comes to a stop.
The 250 Clark team had Rowe and Jeff Francon as their coaches, but the rules stipulate the coaches can only get involved if the team is really stuck on a problem.
“We watched them dismantle the robot and rebuild it for every single mission,” Rowe said.
“It took about four weeks before they arrived at a consistent chassis you could attach things to”.
The boys and their robot finished fifth overall, a result Rowe said they were excited about considering this was their rookie year.
What Rowe and the 250 Clark team noticed at the regional competition was just how much more complex some of the robots were compared to theirs.
“It was eye-opening to see all this and what we can change for next year”, Rowe said.
“We have our own model, but the boys were observing everyone else’s and getting ideas. We definitely will be coming back with a different robot next year”.
Rowe was also impressed with the positive attitude of the other team members.
“We had a hiccup with one of our program set-ups and another team came over to help us right away”, he said.
“So even though it’s a competition, in another way it’s not. We’re all working toward a common goal”.
Robert Lindquist, an 11-year-old Grade 6 student at Maple Ridge Public School, said he enjoys Legos and coding — major reasons why he joined the 250 Clark team.
He’s done some coding at school and finds it easy, although with Clark the Robot he did get stuck while trying to execute some very precise commands. Lindquist already has ideas on how to build the next robot, which the boys may call Clark 2.0.
Calder Quinn, a 12-year-old Grade 7 student at Maple Ridge Public School, wants to learn more about engineering and coding.
Quinn was a bit overwhelmed by the calibre of the other robots he saw at the competition and talked to the other students about their projects.
At eight years of age, Jackson Francon is the youngest team member. He’s in Grade 3 at Maple Ridge Public School
“It looked interesting and fun”, the youngster said when asked why he joined the team.
“I hope to learn how to make robots better and work on coding and make new friends”.
Beckett Giroux, 9, attends the South Shore Education Centre and is currently in Grade 4.
“I plan to be an engineer," he said. "I made the original mock-up and then we changed it. I also made a couple of codes. Coding was difficult and it was challenging”.
Giroux said his mouth dropped when he arrived at West Ferris Secondary School for the regional competition when he saw the other 20 teams and their robots.
Forest Rowe, Mike Rowe’s 11-year-old son, is a Grade 6 student at the South Shore Education Centre.
“I’ve been doing Legos since I was five and I like the combination of doing Legos and coding,” he said.
“It was exciting to build the robot, testing it, failing, then testing it again and finally succeeding.”
Rowe said seeing the other teams was a bit scary, but he was also interested in knowing what they built.
“A lot of the robots were very impressive,” he said.
All the boys said they would rejoin the team next year.
The sixth team member, Ryder Quinn, is Calder’s 10-year-old brother and is currently in Grade 5 at Maple Ridge. He was not able to make the competition.
The 250 Clark team is disbanding now that the regional competition has concluded.
But for the Awesome in Powassan team, coach Will Armstrong said the boys are staying put.
“We got scores, marks, and feedback from the judges and referees,” Armstrong said.
“We have a month to work on what’s identified as areas of weakness, so we’ll be working on the robot and making some programming changes.”
Armstrong likens the next four weeks to starting the Legos robotics season all over again. He’s optimistic the Awesome in Powassan team will be up to the challenge while in Toronto, adding the competition at the provincial championships will be fierce.
The overall champion of the Dec. 14 event at West Ferris Secondary School was Ecole Publique Heritage of North Bay.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with Almaguin News. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
.jpg;w=120;h=80;mode=crop)