Sharon Tiger Techs win big in annual showdown

May 17—SHARON — Despite the pandemic, Tiger Techs Robotics teams won awards at their annual competition — which was virtual — this year.

The Tiger Techs are composed of students from fifth to ninth grade and have two teams: Team Orange and Team Black.

The pandemic did not hold the teams back.

"We missed the in-person tournaments, but we're happy that we could do a virtual tournament," said Dave Tomko, sixth grade teacher at Case Elementary School and the groups' adviser. "Just to have a culminating event at the end of the year."

Team Black won first place with the robot, and won second place champions overall. Team Orange won first place champions overall and were nominated for the Global Innovation Award. They will be advancing to an event that will take place virtually in July.

"It's a lot harder because we're usually a hands-on team so through multiple school closures, we've been separated," said Keegan Widmyer, ninth grade. "So we've had to have team meetings also over Zoom calls."

Getting ready for competition was especially hard when school was virtual.

"It was a challenge," Tomko said. "But it worked. It was a challenge trying to teach someone virtually for the first time how to program a robot over a zoom call, then if something's not working, how to adjust the wires and the wheels. But they all mentored and they were able to do it online."

At Christmas, Tomko said they made the robots into sleighs and delivered them to homes. Even new students learning how to work the robots had to do it virtually.

"It's a little bit different if you've been doing it for a couple of years, but then it's just like a normal competition," Keegan said.

And like a normal competition there was a theme. This year, the theme was promoting physical fitness.

Team Orange had the idea to solve the problem with senior citizens in Clepper Manor in Sharon. The team worked on the prototype with the physical therapy assistant and social worker there, and ten other members in the community.

"Our problem this year was, we had to get people active that were inactive," said Jonathon Stanek, eighth grade. "So we realized that a lot of people over the age of 50 were inactive in their life."

So, Team Orange came up with the product, the GAME, Getting Active and Mental Exercise. The person using the model reaches their arms or legs to hit each button.

The board is similar to a busy board, in which you switch knobs or hit lights, so they incorporated exercise into that.

"It also includes a competitive aspect to it and a healthier mindset too," Jonathon said.

Over the course of a week, the team tried out their GAME board at Clepper Manor on 15 residents. The physical therapist told them how much the residents liked the board and said they had fun with it.

"He said one of the people using this actually showed signs of improvement with balance and their ability to stretch, because they were playing the game," Jonathon said.

The board, which started out as a simple circuit, took several hours to program.

Team Black promoted physical fitness by developing a fully working sports mentoring website in which they worked with 27 Sharon High School students and a few alumni.

The website, www.mentor2move.com, allows elementary students to feel more confident learning skills in sports at home — because of the pandemic.

Keegan said the website includes different high school athletes mentoring younger students through videos.

"This way, with the personal connections and maybe knowing some of them, they'll be more motivated to try out for sports," Keegan said.

The website was marketed through Case Avenue Elementary School. It depicts slide shows of athletes and videos the teams made of them. It was made into a competition for the younger students. The team challenged them to check out the website and see if they like it. The person who watched the most videos won a gift card.

"There was so much interest in this that we actually got enough girls to sign up and start another team," Keegan said.

The various pages included 13 different skills with more than 30 athletes. With an editing team, a website design team and a filming team, they filmed the athlete talking about the skills, along with a biography and quote.

"This took us a few months to develop," Keegan said. "We designed it from scratch. It was a lot of work but it's really cool to see we were able to make that."

Katelyn Powell, sixth grade, said the motivation for the project was that they saw a lot of kids weren't joining sports or they weren't active or didn't know the skills.

"They were embarrassed to try out because they didn't know how to play the sport," Katelyn said. "Having the high school mentors and people they actually see play at the games, and people they might know teach them, is a big motivator."

And the team sparked a lot of interest in the website. Hundreds of people watched the videos.

"A lot of students, they're not confident about their skills," Keegan said. "If they can learn at home without other kids seeing them or judging them, they'll be more motivated to try out."

With mostly everything being virtual for a year and a half, Kaytlen Moroney, ninth grade, said robotics was definitely a different experience than in years past.

"But, honestly, I'm just glad we got to have as close as we could have to a real season," Kaytlen said. "I'm just glad we got to come in and compete and have fun this year."

Follow Melissa Klaric on Twitter and Facebook @HeraldKlaric, email: mklaric@sharonherald.com