MANITOULIN—As the Manitoulin Secondary School (MSS) and Wiikwemkoong High School (WHS) First Robotics team prepares for the regional and world championships in FIRST Robotics, including getting funding in place, the teams received a very sizable donation last week.
“We received an email today from the McMaster University engineering department that they have forwarded us a cheque in the amount of $10,000 to sponsor our teams,” said MSS Manitoulin Metal coach-mentor Yana Bauer. “I am just ready to send an email to the members of our team letting them know of this very generous donation. We are very grateful for the McMaster engineering department support.”
“We are supporting two teams from Manitoulin this year, Wiikwemkoong High School (WHS) Robotics-FRC 5672 and Manitoulin Metal Robotics FRC 6865 Manitoulin Secondary School,” said Lindsay Bolan, director outreach and education faculty of engineering McMaster.
“Both schools are eligible for the $10,000 FIRST@Mac Indigenous Travel Subsidy, aimed at teams with a minimum of three Indigenous members and located over 350 kilometres from Hamilton,” explained Ms. Bolan. “The subsidy’s objective is to lower participation barriers for Indigenous youth, especially those from remote areas, aligning with McMaster Engineering’s commitment to fostering equitable, diverse and inclusive youth programs from pre-elementary to university levels. We are looking forward to hosting both student teams, as well as our neighbours from Six Nations Polytechnic STEAM Academy (Brainstorm Robotics FRC 7509) and 32 other teams from around Ontario at the Hamilton regional competition March 28-30.”
“This is a great help to our team,” stated Chris Mara, coach-mentor of the WHS FRC 5672 team. “It will help even the playing field for teams that are not well resourced as city teams are. It will cover a lot of our expenses for the season. Because of our location and the costs of travel and hotel costs we are always looking for funding. It is a big undertaking, and it is great when companies, businesses and organizations step up to help out, and it is great that Manitoulin has two high level robotics teams.”
Mr. Mara said the WHS team will take part in a competition in North Bay March 22-24, then will take part in the McMaster competition. If the team qualifies it will then take part in the provincials in Mississauga in April.
“Our team is made up of 20-30 students from Grades 9-12,” said Mr. Mara, noting the WHS team was the first all-Indigenous team to win the world championship in 2019.
“Last year we had an all-rookie team, and only had one student that had ever been to a robotics competition before,” said Mr. Mara. “As well as our FRC team, we have three FTC teams this year, and even had a team in the champions alliance at the Sudbury competition at Laurentian University earlier this winter.”
“We now have a team of experienced builders and some have designed and built and know what works and what doesn’t, as well as evaluated and put together robot designs,” said Mr. Mara. “Our team has been through the rebuilding years and our students now have some experience; they have a sense of the game evaluation and drive strategy and evaluate robot designs. And they understand their own capabilities.”
“This year’s competition game theme is ‘crescendo,’” said Mr. Mara. “It’s a pretty straight forward game with two elements where you can score points, and the game has an element like throwing a frisbee. It is a classic robotics game. And at the end the robot has to climb onto a stage, which is always a challenge. The robot has to grab onto a tow chain and the teams have to pull their robot up.”
“It will be exciting to see how things go,” said Mr. Mara. “This is a whole new game that no one has played before so every team will be in the same boat to figure it out.”
The Manitoulin Metal team has 25 members and they have been brainstorming the design of their robot and team members will be able to work out on a practice field this year, something that the team has never had before. “This will simulate a game field,” said Ms. Bauer, noting that the team is using an area in the upstairs area of the Mindemoya arena, sharing the space with the Mindemoya Minor Hockey Association (MMHA).
The team is not only going to be holding practice a few times a week, it will be building the robot, forming its business and safety plan and its presentation to be made at each competition the team takes part in.
“We only recently found out which competitions we will be taking part in, with the first being in North Bay on March 22-24,” said Ms. Bauer. The team will then take part in a competition taking place at McMaster Engineering March 28-30, and if the MSS team qualifies then it will go to Mississsauga for the provincial championship on April 3-6. “Two weeks after that we will be travelling to Houston for the world championships. We already had to book our flights and hotels,” Ms. Bauer said, pointing out, “This year we will have VIP access to housing. We will be staying right by the convention centre in Houston. We will be able to walk to the convention centre this year. This is very exciting.”
The Manitoulin Metal Robotics’ new book, ‘Robofriends and the MowZone’ has had sales well over 100 so far, on and off-Island, and the team also has several other fundraisers that it has embarked on.
The Manitoulin Metal team with the donation from McMaster to assist, has all its funding in place for the competitions taking part in Ontario.
However, “We are fundraising for the world championships,” said Ms. Bauer. “The total cost will be over $50,000 with flights, hotels, transportation to Toronto along with food and registration for each of the team members. The Manitoulin Metal Robotics team has a Canada Helps Fund webpage to raise funds.”
To donate go to CanadaHelps.org and search for ‘MSS Robotics Fund.’
“We are seeing sponsors coming forward,” said Ms. Bauer, who pointed out $2,300 has been raised to date.
