Portage Township Schools “Porta-Botz!” robotics teams concluded a highly successful season at the World Championships in Dallas, Texas last week.
40 students making up 7 teams spent long hours after school this past year developing and programming robots for the VEX World Challenge “Spin Up”. Similar to disc golf, student teams used the engineering design process to arrive at robotic solutions and compete on weekends versus other schools around the state.
The Porta-Botz! brought home 8 regular season tournament trophies, qualified 6 teams for Indiana’s State Championship at Lucas Oil Stadium, received 2 National Invitations, and qualified 2 teams for the World Championships.
Middle school team “Maverick”, Matthew Lingenfelter and Azariah Ward, and high school team “Big Brained”, Jimmy Scanlan, Trevor Young, Aadoryan Lindsey and Nathan Beals represented the Portage schools and community on the World stage. Both teams were among the top in their Divisions and advanced to the Elimination rounds of the ultra-competitive tournament. The multicultural event featured teams from all around the globe making it a very rewarding and educational experience. This is the 8th consecutive year Portage robotics has advanced to the World’s largest and pinnacle event in competitive robotics.
Portage Robotics coach John Kappes was recognized as “Indiana’s Mentor of the Year” and received the award at the Indiana State Championships. Kappes founded the Portage robotics initiative in 2015. The program has a rich history of accomplishments including State and National Championships, and World Awards. Numerous graduates have gone onto to engineering, technology, and STEM related careers. Their mission statement is "Changing lives one robot at a time!"
Portage Robotics may be followed on social media at www.faceBook.com/PortaBotz2567/