Parkersburg Catholic student Nathan Marks tries to pick up a cone with his RC on Thursday afternoon. (Photo by Tyler Bennett)

PARKERSBURG — Not having a VEX Robotics team for the past several years, the Wood County Technical Center received a grant that will allow it to create a new team.

Available to all Wood County high school students, the VEX team will be making a return to the Tech Center, where previous teams have placed at competitions in the past.

Taught by Amy Stewart and Jared Voldness, the new team will be in addition to the FIRST Robotics, Dark Side Robotics, already offered in the Tech Center. Some of the same students will be on both teams.

According to Voldness, the difference between the two teams is that for the VEX team, all materials have to be VEX-approved while FIRST can use whatever material they want as long as the total stays under $500. VEX also has a smaller playing field, a 12’x12′ square field, compared to FIRST having to be played on a basketball court.

“For FIRST, they’re tasked to design and come up with anything they can use pretty much anything they want under $500. VEX, all the materials have been VEX approved,” Voldness. “All the plates are about the same size, more kind of a LEGO type piece, compared to have more free room to do whatever you want in FIRST.”

Parkersburg Catholic student Cecilia Shaw, right, and instructor Amy Stewart, left, take out VEX materials on Thursday afternoon. (Photo by Tyler Bennett)

In addition to local and state competitions, according to Voldness, there have been some talks from the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission about making robotics a sanctioned sport.

Voldness also said more schools are participating in the state compared to the last time they competed, going from 30 to 60 or 70 teams.

Having taught many of the students in his pre-engineering and computer science classes at the Caperton Center, Voldness said teaching those classes makes the translation from class to building easier.

Now in his third year as part of Dark Side Robotics, Parkersburg Catholic junior Paul Teltscher said not only has the team helped him with the engineering, programming and building of robots. Teltscher said he has grown to be a team leader and player in working with his classmates.

“I have a lot of fun here. Before VEX, I thought I could maybe do mechanical engineering, maybe a little bit of programming, but now I think I could become a team leader,” Teltscher said. “I learned to really be a better team player through this project. So, I think it’s, there’s a lot of value in the whole team effort, working together on multiple projects simultaneously. It’s just a whole another level of communication and teamwork really.”

Parkersburg Catholic students Helena Teltscher, left, and Matt Tucker, right, make adjustments on a project on Thursday afternoon. (Photo by Tyler Bennett)

Contact Tyler Bennett at tbennett@newsandsentinel.com