Madison Schools to compete in 2011 BEST Competition
Twenty middle and high school teams from across north Alabama, including Bob Jones High School and Madison Academy, are expected to travel to Decatur for the 2011 Tennessee Valley BEST (Boosting Engineering Science and Technology) robotics competition.
The competition begins Oct. 14 and concludes on Oct. 15 with the Game Day competition, taking place from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Carlton Kelley Gymnasium located on the Decatur campus of Calhoun Community College.
BEST features two parallel competitions. A robotics game is based upon an annual theme with four teams competing at once in a series of three minute, round-robin matches. This year’s theme is Bugs! The BEST Award is presented to the team that best embodies the concept of Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology. Elements include a project summary notebook, oral presentation, table display and spirit and sportsmanship.
The competition officially kicked off Sept. 3, where participants received a robotics kit and will have six weeks to design and test their entry. The winning teams advance to the regional championship to be held Dec. 2-3, at Auburn University.
Area schools scheduled to participate in this year’s competition include Asbury High School (Attalla), Academy for Science and Foreign Language (Huntsville), Athens Bible School, Athens Middle School, Baylor School (Chattanooga, Tenn.),Brookhaven, Oak Park and Cedar Ridge Middle Schools (Decatur), Buckhorn High School (Hazel Green), Decatur Austin Robotic Coalition, Decatur Heritage, Lindsay Lane Christian Academy (Athens), Liberty Middle School (Madison), Life Christian Academy (Huntsville), Priceville High School, Redstone Robotics – New Century Technology High School, Columbia High School, and Lee Engineering Magnet High School (Huntsville), Riverside Christian Academy (Fayetteville, Tenn.), Sparkman High School (Harvest), and Virgil Grissom High School (Huntsville).
Tennessee Valley BEST is co-produced by Calhoun Community College in Decatur and Auburn University’s Colleges of Engineering and Sciences and Mathematics. For more information, visit www.calhoun.edu/TVBEST or contact Dr. Sue Mitchell at (256) 306-2655.
