Staff photo / Bob Coupland The LaBrae schools RoboVikes robotics team of seventh to 12th graders finished its season earning the “Innovation Award” at the FIRST Tech Challenge. The team was among area robotics teams who showcased its robots Saturday at the Eastwood Mall in Niles. Front row, from left, are Michael Tomkins, freshman; Maddy Swearingen, freshman; Elena Smith, seventh grader; Jaxon Steele, seventh grader; Ian Holleran, eighth grader; and Adyson Ford, sophomore. Back row are Steven Yoder, freshman; Hamdi Sarama, sophomore; Conner Palmer, sophomore; Kat Tucker, sophomore; Khloe Brummitt, seventh grader; Riley Cunningham, seventh-grader; and Bryson Hall, junior.

NILES — While the Easter Bunny was nearby greeting young children, local high school students gathered this weekend inside the Eastwood Mall to showcase their engineering skills with robots they built and programmed for various competitions.

Among the local schools was LaBrae, which has been taking part in the FIRST Tech Challenge with its robot “Boomer.”

Team adviser Joe Slifka, who is LaBrae schools technology teacher, said this is the eighth year that the LaBrae RoboVikes team of 13 seventh- to 12th-grade students have competed.

He said the FIRST Tech Challenge is a step below the FIRST Robotics Challenge, which makes larger scale robots. The FIRST Robotics competes in a 25-by-50 foot area and the FIRST Tech Challenge competes in a 12-by-12 foot area.

‘We make 18-inch robots while they make much bigger robots,” Slifka said. “This was a learning year for us. We did not perform as well as we would have liked to at our competitions. We did receive the Innovative Award at a competition held at Kent State University main campus.”

He said that over the years the team has received the “The Inspire Award” and “The Think Award.”

“The Innovative Award was presented to us for the way we retrieved the artifacts during the competition. Our robot was able to shoot the wiffle ball from a launcher into a target like a softball pitching machine,” Slifka said.

He said the smaller-size robots are much easier for classroom management as they practice in an area of his classroom.

Bryson Hall, a junior team member, said he designed the cylinder for the robot that holds three 5-inch whiffle balls.

“The competition season is over so now we take our robot places to showcase what it can do and do community outreach,” Hall said.

Connor Palmer, a sophomore team member, said the task for the robot was to collect artifacts which are whiffle balls and to shoot them into an elevated goal target 4 feet off the ground to score points.

The teams learn their challenge for the robots in September with work beginning on the robots by October deciding what it will look like.

Jaxon Steele, a seventh grade team member, said this is his first year on the team.

“It is really fun as a team challenging ourselves and seeing how the robot can score points,” Steele said.

Slifka said Saturday’s game-based challenge allowed LaBrae and teams from Cloverleaf and Sharon, Pa., to put their robots to the test.

He said the robot was programming to lift the whiffle balls up off the ground like a softball pitching machine.

Slifka said the students learn STEM and engineering skills to create the robot.

The Saturday event also highlighted FIRST Lego League which is for elementary and middle school students.

Slifka said LaBrae has a robotics club for middle and high school students which in addition to the robot they use for competitions they also constructed Magnus which is a 5-foot tall robot, which is used to entertain the public.