[Al Skierkiewicz]

Guys,
Woodie's competitions were an annual event for one of his classes. He had been doing the competition for many years by the time 1992 rolled around. It was actually broadcast on PBS via pickup by the local Boston station, WGBH. Fed to the PBS network, many station around the country would broadcast it in Saturday afternoon (non prime time) programming. It also changed from year to year. At least one time it had ping pong balls on a dual sided and sloped playing field. The winning team had a mechanism that would cross the center of the field and steal all of the balls accumulated by the other team.
This competition also was a team effort involving offensive and defensive strategies as well as mechanical design skills.