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The results are in for the second annual VEX Robotics Competition that was held at Central Middle School on Saturday.

The event, sponsored by Phillips 66, had 26 middle school teams and 16 high school teams, including students from Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Nowata. Last year, there was only a middle school division with 12 in attendance.

Thad Satterfield manages Phillips 66’s talent program. Satterfield was a judge for the event and he said he was proud of what he saw. 

The VEX Robotics Competition at Central Middle School showed Satterfield and Phillips 66 how there is bright hope for the future. Satterfield said it shows him that the students at the middle school and high school levels are really engaged with STEM education and skills.

This year’s competition was Tower Takeover, where two alliances composed of two teams each competed in matches consisting of a 15-second autonomous period following by a 105-second driver-controlled period. The object of the game was to attain a higher score than the opposing team in placing cubes in towers or scoring cubes in goals.

Many school and community volunteers made the event possible. The VEX Robotics Competition, presented by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, is the largest and fastest-growing middle school and high school robotics program globally with more than 24,000 teams from 61 countries playing in over 1,700 competitions worldwide. Each year, an exciting engineering challenge is presented in the form of a game. Students, with guidance from their teachers and mentors, build innovative robots and compete year-round.

In addition to learning valuable engineering skills, students gain life skills such as teamwork, perseverance, communication, collaboration, project management, and critical thinking. The VEX Robotics Competition prepares students to become future innovators with 95-percent of participants reporting an increased interest in STEM subject areas and pursuing STEM-related careers.

For our earlier report on the 2nd Annual VEX Robotics Competition held at Central Middle School that took place on Saturday, Jan. 18th, click here.