Whiz Kids: The MVMMS Robot Building and Wielding Team

Melrose Patch Whiz Kids of the Week

• VEX robot team of Meghan Cincotta and Chloe Melville 
• School:
• Accomplishment: On Saturday, Jan. 7 at the Mass State Championship of the VEX Robotics competition, they and their robot won first place in the programming skills challenge among the middle school teams, second in the driving skills competition and placed 15th out of 66 middle school and high school teams in the overall competition.

Submitted by James Horne of Melrose First Robotics: 

Meghan and Chloe are joined by Austin Swank, a freshman at Lexington Voc Tech and supported by John Wright, Mike Festa, and Mike Groark as mentors. James Horne was the spark plug for the team. We also had help from last year's mentor Kevin Hegarty.

The students met several times during the holiday break at the ReMax/Heritage office in downtown Melrose, and the Melrose Public library so that we could have a warm place to work while the school was shut down.

They have done an awesome job. We drove the robot around and tested it last night, we think we should be able to score points in both autonomous (no human control), and teleoperated mode (human control). The robot has been built such that it could score all points possible.

When given the choice of leaving from MHS at 7:30 a.m. with limited practice/work time or 6:30 a.m. they all elected the earlier start so that they could get more work time in on the robot. How many times do we see students wanting to show up early on a weekend for an academic activity?

Nominate a Melrose Kid!

Each week, Melrose Patch will seek suggestions from readers for individual kids, youth groups, teens, and even sports teams that wow us with their accomplishments. We want to hear about these amazing children and teens and select one each week as the Patch Whiz Kid.  Submit your nomination in our comment box below or e-mail the information to danield@patch.com. Be sure to include all of the following information:

• Nominator's Name
• Nominator's E-Mail
• Whiz Kid's Name
• Whiz Kid's Age
• Whiz Kid's School
• Whiz Kid's Accomplishment
• An explanation of the accomplishment (approximately 150-300 words).
• A photo, if available.