Arizona high school robotics teams pair ingenuity & teamwork in VEX State Championship

High school is a golden opportunity for most teens to figure out
their passions and hobbies, but for the students at Friday and
Saturday’s VEX State Championship, it’s all about robotics, as fifty Arizona high school robotics teams competed at Desert Ridge High
School over the weekend for a trip to the VEX World Championship in
Dallas from May 6-8.

Only seven teams could qualify through the tournament, based on
winners in the performance categories of tournament champions and
finalists, robotic skills champion, robotic design and team excellence.

This year’s state champions were Aurora 937X, an independent team
from Chandler, and Desert Titan 8800T, another Chandler-based team from
the Trinity Robotics Club.

Team Aurora took the state championship last year as well, and the
repeat victory had the group’s main note keeper, Katie Wong, so excited
that her AirPod case crashed to the ground during celebration.

“The whole thing is just so much fun,” Wong said. “I’ve met a lot of
really great people and we’re all just so passionate when it comes to
robotics and the competing part of it, too. We still can’t believe that
we just won state. Now we’re just excited for worlds.”

VEX, a robotics company owned by Innovation First International,
manages the worldwide event. The competition is in its 19th season, and
more than 20,000 robotics teams worldwide are involved in VEX this year.

The competition also comprises different divisions based on grade
levels from elementary to high school. As the year progresses, regional,
state and national tournaments are held, ultimately leading to the VEX
Robotics World Championship every spring. The state championship over
the weekend hosted teams in the V5 division.

Sophomore Nick Novak participated in the VEX IQ division for seven
years before moving up to V5 earlier this season. Novak is the driver
and secondary builder for his team, Nameless 66556Z, which also
qualified for the world championship as a tournament finalist Saturday.

“As a first-year team in V5, we are really happy that we even
qualified,” Novak said. “Coming in we had low expectations, and we
didn’t win but we’re very satisfied with our performance. We clearly
proved ourselves wrong.”

The game mode played in tournaments changes drastically every season,
which challenges teams to constantly build new robots and form new
strategies while adhering to competition rules and parameters. VEX
tournament commentator Ben Miller, who competed in these events himself
while in high school, thinks that this separates the best teams from the
rest of the competition.

“No one’s telling them exactly what to build here,” Miller said.
“They have constraints, but you can completely choose what you want to
do with your robot, and that’s where the real creativity and ingenuity
comes into play.”

This season, the game mode is called High Stakes, and it consists of
three separate phases over a two-minute period. The first 15 seconds of
game-time is an autonomous phase, where each team’s robot has been
preprogrammed to get into position on its own with as many rings as
possible in preparation for phase two.

The next 90 seconds gives teams control of their robots to place as
many rings on stationary and mobile goals as possible. There are also
positive and negative corners of the playing field that can be used
offensively or defensively to change the point value accumulated on a
particular mobile goal.

In the final 15 seconds, teams have the opportunity for bonus points
if they can climb a ladder in the middle with their robot. The higher
the robot climbs, the more bonus points it is awarded.

Separate phases that each challenge different robotic skills demand a
rigorous preparation process that involves planning, strategizing,
building, coding and endless testing, but the students appear to love
every minute of it. Intense debate and an urgent demeanor can be seen
from each team between matches, putting their unapologetic passion for
robotics on full display.

Charley Cope, a scorekeeping referee at this year’s state
championship, decided to become a certified official a few years ago
after his sons got into robotics. Before long, he was just as invested
as them, and he had to get closer to the action.

“What I really enjoy about VEX is that it’s never the parents
building the robots,” Cope said. “You can tell that the kids built their
own robots. They know these robots and they know them well.”

Once the qualification matches wrap up, it’s time for alliance
selection. Two teams pair up to form an alliance that lasts through the
rest of the tournament, which means that each team competes in the
elimination rounds alongside total strangers.

“My favorite part is definitely the team aspect of the competition,”
Wong said. “You also have to work with new people that you have never
met before, and I’ve just been able to learn a lot from that and improve
at it while meeting a lot of great new people.”

VEX competitions are loaded with challenges and nuances that might
seem overly complicated for high school students, but the overarching
goal is to inspire and mold future innovators. According to VEX, 95% of
participants report an increased interest in STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics) subject areas and pursuing STEM-related
careers, and it all happens through competitions that appeal to young
mechanical minds.

“A lot of these kids will go on to STEM programs, but even if they
don’t go into those fields, they’ll still learn to work as a team in
high-pressure situations and how to problem solve in those situations,”
Miller said. “I did this while in high school and now I’m a mechanical
engineer by trade. A lot of them should have pretty bright futures ahead
of them.”