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On Oct. 22, Mahoning County Career and Technical Center hosted 40 VEX Robotics teams ranging from middle to high school who travelled from three states: Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
MCCTC had five teams represent the school in the competition. The event took place in the Struthers High School Fieldhouse.
VEX Robotics, presented by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, is a student-driven robotics program. Students work in teams to design, build and program robots to compete against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge. Competitions are fast paced and give the students opportunities to test their classroom-learned STEM concepts.
Teams compete five or six times in qualification rounds to determine seed positions for the elimination rounds, which advance teams to the state tournament. The VEX Robotics program has competitions for elementary, middle and high school levels.
“Students who participate in competitive robotics learn important life skills like teamwork, communication and project-based organization in addition to lessons in programs and problem solving,” said Engineering Instructor, Walter Baber.
Tournaments take place at the regional, state and national levels and teams compete in multiple tournaments in an effort to win a spot at VEX Worlds, offered each year in April.
MCCTC is taking their five teams to compete at Perry High School in November and then on to Firestone High School and Kalahari to compete in December.