Kevin Kolodziej
20-10-2005, 15:20
At the risk of tooting our own horn a bit right now, I'd like to introduce everyone to the Milwaukee VEX League. Let me start with a bit of history:
Last year, a small VEX league was formed in the Fox Valley area of Wisconsin. Competitions would be held every two weeks, giving teams a chance to update their designs and become more competitive each week. This league was a bit of a hike for teams from the Milwaukee area, however.
Over the last year or two, the Milwaukee FIRST Support Organization (MFSO) at MSOE has been talking about creating a small competition in the fall that would be open to all local high schools. The idea never saw much progress, however, as the club has virtually no funding and fund raising efforts did not go so well. Without being able to create a prototype robot to show schools what they would be building, the club did not get very far.
Enter VEX. An affordable robotic system perfect for small competitions like the one we were trying to come up with. A team that was involved with the Fox Valley league last year has created a FIRST team (#1714) and wanted to continue their involvement with FIRST. At the same time, The Ultimate Protection Squad (UPS #1675) was looking for something to do in the preseason months to get all of the new students brought up to speed.
The leaders of both teams and myself have now created this Milwaukee VEX League. For this first year, it is limited to VEX teams from within our two FRC teams, but will be expanded next year (after we work out all the kinks). The MFSO has designed a game for the league called "Bottle Battle." Competitions are being held each Wednesday night for 3 weeks, rotating between schools. After the competition each Wednesday, a new game element is presented to the group so that the challenge for the following week changes without requiring a complete redesign of the robots.
Rules for "Bottle Battle" can be found at the MFSO website (http://www.msoe.edu/st_orgs/mfso/) and will be updated each week. Some images of the week 1 competition from last night can be found here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?action=single&picid=11993) and here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?action=single&picid=11994) .
This initial league is a preseason in itself for the Wisconsin State VEX Tournament that we will be organizing for November and December. On November 5th we will be releasing this year's game challenge to 20 teams from Wisconsin. The tournament will be held on December 4th. Registration information will be on http://wirobotics.org/ by Friday or Monday.
We are hoping to make this a huge event in preparation for 2006, when the league and tournament will take on a slightly different and expanded format.
Please let us know what you think so that we can make this the league as fun and educational as possible!
Kevin Kolodziej
Last year, a small VEX league was formed in the Fox Valley area of Wisconsin. Competitions would be held every two weeks, giving teams a chance to update their designs and become more competitive each week. This league was a bit of a hike for teams from the Milwaukee area, however.
Over the last year or two, the Milwaukee FIRST Support Organization (MFSO) at MSOE has been talking about creating a small competition in the fall that would be open to all local high schools. The idea never saw much progress, however, as the club has virtually no funding and fund raising efforts did not go so well. Without being able to create a prototype robot to show schools what they would be building, the club did not get very far.
Enter VEX. An affordable robotic system perfect for small competitions like the one we were trying to come up with. A team that was involved with the Fox Valley league last year has created a FIRST team (#1714) and wanted to continue their involvement with FIRST. At the same time, The Ultimate Protection Squad (UPS #1675) was looking for something to do in the preseason months to get all of the new students brought up to speed.
The leaders of both teams and myself have now created this Milwaukee VEX League. For this first year, it is limited to VEX teams from within our two FRC teams, but will be expanded next year (after we work out all the kinks). The MFSO has designed a game for the league called "Bottle Battle." Competitions are being held each Wednesday night for 3 weeks, rotating between schools. After the competition each Wednesday, a new game element is presented to the group so that the challenge for the following week changes without requiring a complete redesign of the robots.
Rules for "Bottle Battle" can be found at the MFSO website (http://www.msoe.edu/st_orgs/mfso/) and will be updated each week. Some images of the week 1 competition from last night can be found here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?action=single&picid=11993) and here (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?action=single&picid=11994) .
This initial league is a preseason in itself for the Wisconsin State VEX Tournament that we will be organizing for November and December. On November 5th we will be releasing this year's game challenge to 20 teams from Wisconsin. The tournament will be held on December 4th. Registration information will be on http://wirobotics.org/ by Friday or Monday.
We are hoping to make this a huge event in preparation for 2006, when the league and tournament will take on a slightly different and expanded format.
Please let us know what you think so that we can make this the league as fun and educational as possible!
Kevin Kolodziej