St Joseph’s NS of Ballinrobe win major award at international robotics competition in Dallas

ST Joseph’s NS of Ballinrobe are rejoicing after becoming the first ever team from Connacht to be honoured at the global VEX Robotics World Championship.

The school scooped an ‘Innovate’ award and the major international competition for demonstrating ‘an effective and well documented Engineering Design Process for a specific aspect of their team’s design of gameplay strategy’.

A group of ten students travelled from South Mayo to Dallas with their principal, Dymphna Culhane, teachers Sean Flannelly and Edel Roache, as the first Connacht team ever to represent Ireland at the competition.

This historic win comes on the back of an All-Ireland title they delivered through a robot called Generation 6, which was tasked with picking up and dispatching as many square cubes as possible in a minute.

St Joseph’s were the sole Irish representatives at this year’s competition and have received huge support from the local community.

The school, which teaches coding from a young age, have made waves on the regional, national and now the international robotics scene since they first began entering competitive teams a number of years ago.