Hopkins Cup: first city-sponsored robotics competition for public schools

Thirty-eight teams from 20 different Baltimore city public schools will square off Saturday at the Hopkins Robotics Cup, this city’s first robotics competition for VEX robotics teams.
The competition has been in the works since June 2012, said Margaret Hart, one of the co-organizers and the Middle School STEM Program Manager at the Center for Education Outreach at Johns Hopkins‘ Whiting School of Engineering.
Competitive robotics in the Baltimore region is more a sport than casual hobby, significant to middle and high school students attending classes inside and outside Baltimore city, as Technically Baltimore has reported.
Watch VEX robots in a Sack Attack match:

But unlike the international VEX Robotics World Championship — a feat not all Baltimore city robotics teams will accomplish either because they fail to qualify or fail to raise sufficient funding to pay for registration and transportation — the Hopkins Cup is a competition to which middle and high school students “can aspire to here in Baltimore,” as Josh Gabrielse, who runs the Baltimore City Public Schools’ robotics program, told Technically Baltimore.
“We want the city to be able to support its own [robotics] program,” Hart said. Holding the Hopkins Cup, she added, is an important step in “building the infrastructure in the community here” to be able to hold such robotics events.
Details for the Hopkins Cup:

• Date: May 4
• Location: Goldfarb Gym inside the Newton White Athletic Center at Johns Hopkins University
• Doors open: 9 a.m.
• Competition begins: 9:30 a.m.
• Awards ceremony: 4:30 p.m.

From TEDxBaltimore 2013: Keimmie Booth of the Western High School RoboDoves on how robotics has helped her in school: