On March 13, the Philadelphia 76ers held their first ever Robotics Night to raise STEM awareness. The 76ers gave us use of the court from 12-3 p.m. to setup, run the tournament, and break down. At 12:30 we began matches. Ten V5RC teams and 10 VEX IQ teams ran four matches each. After the matches, two-team alliances competed in the semi finals, and finals. Two Haverford teams, Team 169b and 169y, were Tournament Champions and received their trophy and got their pictures taken on the Court.
Two VEX IQ Challenge Teamwork Finals matches ran during the 76ers pregame show in front of fans who came to see the 76ers defeat the Sacramento Kings. We brought two fields onto the court and had all of the students who competed that day stand behind the fields cheering on the top two alliances as they ran their one minute match. The winning alliance, Team 10497b, the QCS Robo-Bears from Quakertown Christian School in Quakertown, Pennsylvania and Team 3615s, Triangle Robotics of Triangle Elementary School in Triangle, Virginia, got their pictures taken on the court with their trophies.
During the game, we had a V5RC field and VEX IQ field set up for fans to stop by and play a game of Robot Freeze Tag. People who had come to the game found themselves out in the concourse having fun driving robots and learning about how to start their own VEX Robotics Competition and VEX IQ Challenge Team.
Special thanks to SySTEMic Solutions for event photography and for helping run the tournament in the afternoon and for iDesign for helping with the robot demonstrations in the Concourse during the basketball game.