Garden Academy Robotics Programmed to Win – Noozhawk

Posted on May 10, 2017 | 10:01 a.m.

Garden Street Academy Middle School students Julian Dene and Drin Ymeri at Los Angeles Regional Robotics Tournament. (Garden Street Academy)

For members of the Garden Street Academy Robotics team, the adage that practice makes perfect proved a winning mantra that paid off with the overall top honors at the recent 19th annual Greater Los Angeles Regional Botball Tournament in Burbank.

Garden Street Academys Middle School robotics team took home fifth place against 22 other middle- and high-school teams.

As described by the international program, Botball is an Educational Robotics Program engaging middle and high school-aged students in a team-oriented robotics competition, and serves as a perfect way to meet todays new common core standards.

Garden Street's Middle School team is made up of seven students: Sofia Rakowski, Drin Ymeri, Erin Considine, Julian Dene, Kai Urbany, Alexander Burns and Owen Hartley.

The High School team has three students: Adara Balabanow and Liam Klingensmith, both sophomores, and Natalya Foreman, a senior who will be attending the UC Berkeley in the fall.

The team is small in relation to other robotics and engineering groups in the greater Los Angeles region, however with close camaraderie, each members talents are utilized.

Relying strictly on their technical wizardry, Garden Street Academy managed to exceed its own expectations by winning the tournaments overall first-place trophy.

The team refined its game plan with a final practice session in the Garden Street Academys robotics room, the day before the tournament.

Adara, a sophomore and third-year robotics team member, said: "Engineering is a possible future career of mine and I like Botball because it lets me see the software and hardware side of mechanical designs.

"I've done Botball for the last three years; in our first year we averaged nine points in the competition, and in this last event we got a high score of 78.

"While I mostly do it as a learning experience, it was great to walk away with first place. Even though the team is small, we work well together and were able to get a lot of things done due to the extensive commitment of all members," Adara said.

The High School Robotics team won the Judges Choice Award for mechanism and strategy, and took second place in the seeding and double elimination portions of the competition.

These awards, combined with their excellent documentation score, resulted in the local team winning the tournament and bringing home the first-place trophy.

For more information on the Garden Street Academy, visit http://www.gardenstreetacademy.org.

Angela Jevons for Garden Street Academy.

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Garden Academy Robotics Programmed to Win - Noozhawk