Robotics Students Close out Season in Top 2.5% of Global Teams

Seven students, three parents, one advisor and two robots recently traveled to the 2015 VEX Robotics World Championship, held in Louisville, Kentucky. More than 850 robots from 29 countries attended the event, which featured different divisions of competitions for students in grade 3 through the university level.

While this was the third year in a row that a team from Ranney School has qualified for the World Championship, this was the first year that two Ranney robots qualified.

“New Jersey was allowed to send eight robots to Worlds this year,” says Robotics Club Advisor Chiara Shah. “It was quite an accomplishment that two of those were Ranney School robots. No other team from the state earned two spots.”

Team 3815A, led by Raymond Moser ’15 and supported by Amy Winkler ‘15, Chris Glenn ‘18 and Kylie Medlin ’15 competed in the Arts High School division. The team finished the qualifying rounds with an even five wins and five loses, ultimately ranking 46th in a division of 90 robots.

After the event, Raymond said, “The latter half of our robotics season was a quick progression from winning the New Jersey State VEX Robotics Programming Skills Championship, to winning the Create US Open Robotics Programming Skills Championship, and finally competing at the Worlds Championship to not only do better than any previous year, but to outperform any team ever sent from New Jersey. It was a great, and stressful, way to end my robotics career at Ranney.”

Team 3815B, led by Brandon Gioggia ‘16 and supported by Coleen Ross ’15 and Ava Papetti ‘15, competed in the Math High School Division. The team finished the qualifying rounds with four wins, five loses and one tie, ranking 49th in a division of 90 robots.

Says Brandon, “The world championship was a fun experience that I was excited to take part in again this year. I was able to see friends I had made previously at other national and international competitions. I met lots of very smart, nice people who I'm excited to work with in the future. We did not perform as well as we did at nationals, but we still had a very strong performance and are excited for next season.”

The 450 robots competing in the High School divisions at the world competition represent the top 5% of all the teams from around the globe. Ranney’s 46th and 49th rankings put our teams in an even more impressive top 2.5%.

Adds Ava, “One of the best parts of going to Worlds is having the opportunity to speak with people from all over the globe. A highlight of the trip for me was having to translate between a team from Mexico that mainly spoke Spanish and the rest of my team.”

Ranney School finished the 2014-2015 VEX Robotics season with a total of 30 awards, earned by teams from grades 6 through 12. Follow our webpage here.

While the 2014-2015 VEX Robotics season is now over, Ranney Robotics teams are already sketching and designing their robots for next year’s challenge. The VRC game “Nothing but Net” and the VEX IQ game “Bank Shot” were unveiled at the World Championship. New Jersey typically begins its competition season in November. “Until then,” says Shah, “students will be dreaming, building, practicing, researching and programming.”