Woodbridge High robotics team wins state title

On Friday, February 16th and Saturday, February 17th, the Woodbridge Senior High School Robotics Team participated in the Virginia VEX Robotics State Championships. Of the 56 teams from all over Virginia, nine of them were from WSHS. Teams went to the state tournament to vie for the state title and the right to move on to the VEX World Championships. Five of the school’s nine robots got through the round robin qualifiers and continued to compete in the playoffs for the title. In the end, WSHS Team 1575 X made it to the finals on an alliance with Team 177V from Richmond and 8086A from Glenn Allen. In the finals they defeated an alliance made up of three teams from the Potomac School (12C, 12G, and 12J) from Mclean. Team 1575X captained by both Daniel Diaz and James Tsai and team members: Heath Bahm, Kayla Yarbrough, Kimiya Farzinfar, Adam Culbertson, and Peter Benitez finished the day as State Tournament Champions. This year, WSHS will be sending only one robot to compete against the world in the VEX World Robotics Championships to be held in Louisville, KY from April 25th to April 28nd at the Kentucky Expo Center. There they will match designs and wits with 540 teams from all over the world. Congratulations Woodbridge for seven consecutive appearances in the VEX World Tournament!

Each year the robotics teams build a new robot to compete in that year’s competition. Each competition starts with a 15 second autonomous period where the robot operates completely on its own based on how the students have programmed it. Followed by a 1 minute 45 second driver control period. This year they needed to build a robot that could pick up and stack cones and move those stacks of cones around the field into their scoring zones. For each match a team is paired up with another team to form an alliance and they compete against another alliance of two teams to score as many points as possible. So there are 4 robots on the field at a time in two teams of two trying to pick up and score as many cones as possible in the allotted time.

Woodbridge robotics participated in five regional competitions leading up to the State Championship Tournament. Teams A, B, D, H, and X were all part of at least one Tournament Champion alliance, meaning that they won the tournament. In the final tournament of the season at Briarwoods was large enough so not only the Tournament Champions, but also the Tournament Finalists, qualified for states. In this tournament Teams C and M were tournament finalists. Teams N and W qualified for states by having some of the highest scores in the robot driver and autonomous skills challenges in the state.

Additionally, Team D won the Excellence Award in three of those tournaments and Team H won the Excellence Award in one tournament. The Excellence Award is given to the overall top team. It is the highest honor given out in the VEX Robotics Competition. The recipient of this award is a team that exemplifies overall excellence in creating a high quality VEX robotics program. This team excels in many areas and is a shining example of dedication, devotion, hard work, and teamwork. As a strong contender in numerous award categories, this team deserves to be recognized for building a quality robotics program and a “team” committed to quality in everything that they do.