The far from ideal weather did not seem to dampen the spirits of the fourth through eighth-grade students who showed up for the 13th annual Shocker MINDSTORMS challenge Saturday despite the rain.

The Wichita State robotics challenge encourages middle school students to experience the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields in a hands-on competition. The College of Engineering and the College of Education hosted the event at the Heskett Center.

 “WuShock: An Unexpected Journey” inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” was the theme. Participants’ tasks called for navigating through courses, climbing ramps and displacing objects. The course was designed to imitate Bilbo Baggins’ journey through the Shire and the mountains.

“Some of the designs are very innovative,” Robin Jacobs, a WSU computer science sophomore and event volunteer, said. “The hardware and software combination is quite amazing.”

The students were allowed an unlimited number of practice runs on the courses in order to make changes to their design. The 31 teams were required to set up a display table to explain their design. 

“It is funny how many times they come in to have a practice run,” Jennifer Bensky, a Flight Safety employee volunteering as a judge, said.

Jessica Mallard, the Wichita Collegiate Smartans team sponsor, said teams faced some obstacles to complete their robots.

“We had four snow days,” she said. “We would have met on three of those days, and it was definitely a setback.”

“I had an easier course before and this year has been a challenge,” Conner Caughlin, an eighth grader on the Smartans team, said. 

Their team ultimately finished first in the expert division.

A look at the event’s webpage shows more than a mere school level competition.

“This is a recruitment program. We hope that the students will experience what engineering school is like and WSU is like,” Karen Reynolds, director of recruiting and retention from the College of Engineering, said. “We hope that they will remember WSU, and they do.”

Several team members tweeted their scores and pictures from the event using the #MINDSTORMS13 hashtag on Twitter. The event was streamed live on WSU’s website. 

WSU staff members and employees of aviation companies in Wichita judged the event. Spirit Aerosystems and Airbus sponsored the event.