CCSD Teams Advance to Super Regional Robotics Competitions

Three Cherokee County School District teams earned honors at regional First LEGO League robotics competitions to advance to super regionals!

Mill Creek Middle School’s LEGO Cats – Pink and Gold teams and Dean Rusk Middle School’s Brick Army II team all earned high enough overall scores at regionals to move on to the super regionals event this weekend.  Mill Creek’s teams also both earned the Core Values award for their respective competition groups.

The Mill Creek MS Pink team is made up of: Samantha Catledge, Vanessa Dimitrova, Chloe Hagin, Aditi Patel, Radhika Patro, Tulsi Patel, Ana Pena, Abby Sargenski, and Seeya Uppal.  The Gold team is made up of: Bala Dhodda, Isaac Freeman, Tucker Hsu, Carey McCullough, Ben Padberg, Grant Peppers, Kingston Te and Tanush Vallamsetty.  Their coaches are teachers Ryan Brumbelow and Mark Markley.

The Dean Rusk MS team is made up of: Luke Buchanan, Mason Edwards, Agilan Poovendran Kumaresan, Aiden Lanier, Ava Murray, Anderson Smith, Liam Snider, Callie Tisdale, and Mohamed Zafran.  Their coaches are teachers Teresa Hutto and Lauren Snider.

For First LEGO League competitions, elementary and middle school teams design and build a robot using the LEGO Mindstorms system.  The robot must solve specific missions on a tabletop playing field with models made from LEGO bricks.  Each team also completes a research project to analyze and solve a problem; this year’s theme was focused on ocean exploration and ecosystem conservation.

Trophies are given for four categories of competition: Robot Design, Core Values, Robot Performance and Project, with an overall Grand Champion trophy for the event’s highest score.  Teams advance to super regionals based on their score and can further advance to a state championship.  

The super regional competition, which will feature top teams from the region’s public and private elementary and middle schools, will be hosted by Mill Creek MS.  It is coordinated by Mr. Markley and Mr. Brumbelow, who also coordinated the regional event at their school.  

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