214 robots take the field at US national competition for Jewish schools |
NEW YORK — The students crowded around the rink, shouting encouragement at the robots racing to scoop up red- and blue-colored balls.
As the scoreboard showed the clock winding down, the robots scooted to park in a designated spot for bonus points at the end of the round.
The referee shouted out the score — 45 points for the blue team to red team’s 15 — and commanded the contestants, “Take your robots,” as the clock hit zero. The blue team cheered.
The event was an annual robotics competition for Jewish students held by the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE), a nonprofit that boosts science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs in Jewish day schools, as the field becomes more of a priority — and faces challenges — in the expanding Jewish school system.
“They don’t realize that they’re learning because they’re having fun, but it’s so educational,” said Philip Brazil, the vice president of development at CIJE. “The amount that they’re learning on lift and power and measuring and coding and driving and teamwork, there’s so much there.”
CIJE saw a need for the tournaments five years ago because the mainstream robotics competitions often held events on Saturdays, so Shabbat-observant schools could not attend.
The competitions are modeled on and use technology from VEX Robotics, an educational program that holds tournaments for students around the US.
Wednesday’s event, called the CIJE VEX IQ & V5 Robotics Tournament, was the culmination of 17 smaller competitions throughout the year that were held around the US, Brazil said. The competitors make the robots throughout the school year, often rebuilding them repeatedly.
Around 1,100 students from 60 middle and high schools fielded 214 robots at the New York competition. Schools traveled to the event, held in Manhattan’s Nike Track and Field Center at the Armory, from New York, Connecticut, Florida, Texas, Maryland, Ohio and Georgia.
Fourteen students from the Modern Orthodox Brauser Maimonides Academy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, brought five robots to the competition. The students in Florida woke at 4 a.m. to make the trip, while the team’s eighth graders cut a senior trip to Washington, DC, short to get to New York.
“It’s honestly crazy. I didn’t even know there were this many Jewish schools,” said 7th grader Ronen Lazar, whose........