HUTTO – This past weekend, Hutto Middle School played host to teams from across the region as elementary and middle school students showed off their skills in the VEX Robotics State Championship.
Five teams from Hutto Middle School and one team from Howard Norman Elementary earned top scores and will next compete for the title of World Champions.
Head Judge Bryant Nelson said the competition was intense.
“There’s a lot of very easy ways for robots to get stuck or make mistakes,” he said. “The kids are having to be very focused this year and make very specialized fine-tuned changes to the robots.”
Nelson compared the competition to sports tournaments.
“You don’t usually see a lot of excitement and fanfare for academic type events, but this has a really nice combination of academic and sports, so kids can experience that very sports-like environment,” he said.
Hutto Middle School coach Ryan Mann said the competition
Photo by Edie Zuvanich.
was very close for the state championships. HMS teams, which Mann co-coaches with teacher Joie Robinson, won the Overall Robotics State Championship, as well as the Design Award (Engineering Notebook & Interview), Innovate Award (Robot Design) and Think Award (Programming).
“For the third year in a row, HMS Robotics are state champs,” Mann said. “We now get the chance to represent the Hippo Nation at the world’s largest robotics competition.”
This also marks the third trip to the world competition for Howard Norman Elementary’s after-school robotics club. “Yesterday was special because it was the first time that every one of my students competed at State,” said Howard Norman coach Rebecca Bales.
Bales said this year her group, named Jazz’s Bot Squad, has 32 students forming six teams.
All six teams competed at the state event, and one will now be competing at the World Championships.
In addition to each team building and programming its own robot, Bales said the student teams must drive the robot through a skills challenge, keep an engineering notebook detailing their process, and face an interview of industry professionals. This year, volunteers from Samsung Austin Semiconductor interviewed the teams.
“Workforce development and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills are vital for our workforce, so when our employees get to interact with students it’s fun and exciting,” said spokesperson Michele Glaze. “They got to see the next generation shine in robotics.”
Student competitors said they got into robotics because it was fun, but they also realized other benefits. “It definitely helps us with problem-solving and learning about all the different aspects of real life,” said HMS competitor Douglas Houser. “Being able to work on your own and work with others -- it basically helps all around.”
Billed as the largest robotics competition in the world, the VEX Robotics World Championship 2023 will be held in Dallas from April 25 – May 4. Last year an estimated 30,000 students representing 2,900 teams from over 40 countries competed in the event.
