Lake County Teams Demonstrate Excellence at Regional Championships

Forty teams made up of Lake County students did a remarkable job at the four North/Central Florida Championships this weekend, with a record number of teams qualifying for the World Championships in Dallas April 26 – May 4. Lake County earned the majority of the top awards (Teamwork Champion, Excellence, and Design) at the events. VEX IQ was held at East Ridge Middle School on Saturday, March 11.

Cypress Ridge teams earned six trophies including Teamwork Champion and the Design Award and qualified four teams for Worlds.  Pinecrest Lakes Academy won the Judges Award. Minneola Charter School also qualified two teams with excellent skills runs.  Saturday was also the Championship for VRC Middle School at East Ridge.

ERMS won six awards and qualified three VEX teams for Worlds. Sunday was Championship day for VEX IQ Middle School with East Ridge, Windy Hill, and Pinecrest Lakes all claiming trophies and tickets to the Dallas Championship.  Apopka High School and two Lake County independent teams, with students from Tavares, South Lake, and Lake Minneola High Schools dominated the VEX High School Championship in Tampa with AHS and ACE earning two awards each and Jelly sweeping the triple crown of Excellence, Skills, and Teamwork Champions. 

The VEX IQ Competition fosters student development of teamwork, collaboration, critical thinking, project management, and communication skills required to prepare them to become the next generation of innovators and problem solvers. In the VEX IQ Competitions, students, with guidance from their teachers and mentors, build a robot using simple, snap-together VEX IQ parts to solve an engineering challenge that is presented each year in the form of a game. Teams work together to score points in Teamwork Matches and get to show off their skills individually in driver-controlled and programming Robot Skills Challenges. This year’s game, Slapshot, involved manipulating five different dispensers to release pucks that were shot under a bar into a goal zone. VRC Robots are constructed primarily from metal parts.

To prepare for the tournament, the group worked together to design, build and program a robot using VEX V5, that could quickly and efficiently solve specific challenges that come with playing the 2022-2023 VEX Robotics Competition game, Spin Up in which the robots had to be able to collect and shoot discs into a basket. Each week, the students apply what they’ve learned about STEM in the classroom, to build these semi-autonomous machines. An equally important set of skills is learned through the competition — communication, project management, time management, and teamwork.

For more information about these programs, contact the coach at any of these schools: Cypress Ridge, East Ridge Middle, Pinecrest Lakes Academy, Minneola Charter, or Apopka High School.