St. Vincent Catholic School wins robotics competition

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - A Mobile Elementary School beat out 56 other schools in the south and east to win a robotics competition.

More than 30 students worked on the Robotics Project at St. Vincent de Paul Elementary School. The school was named overall champion in a robotics competition on Saturday and Sunday at Auburn University.

What was their mission?

Principal Mary McLendon said, "We had to develop a robot that could climb an elevator, that would take equipment, materials, and supplies from the earth, to a space station, and then remove the waste products and bring them back to earth, or release them into space."

The competition was designed to stimulate interest in engineering among middle and high school students. Each team could only use supplies provided by the organizers.

One of the students, Thomas Shields, said, "The green bottle is the full fuel bottle, and the white one, we bring down, because its empty.  And, then, the wiffle balls, the light colored balls, are just things that they need."

They had 42 days to build their device.

Student Michael Chavers said, "It was like the day before (the deadline), it was finally finished."

When asked what he was going to do when he got older, student Rush Lyons said, "I'm going in the military.  I haven't decided what I'm going to do, exactly."

McLendon said, "They just did a unique job, a wonderful job, but, I can't express how excited I was."