We are Team 7035M, a VEX Robotics team from Miraleste Intermediate School. We're all 8th graders, and most of us have been doing robotics here for all three years.

This year our team achieved something that no other robotics team in our school district has ever done - we won the 2017 California State VEX Robotics Championship. That win qualified us to compete in the 2017 World VEX Robotics Championship tournament - something only the top 1% of middle school VEX teams in the world get to do.

The 2016-17 Vex Robotics season was our most successful one ever. In total, we earned six awards including two judges awards, one robot skills champion, one design award, and two tournament champions awards. All that was accomplished by a team of six diverse teenagers who specialize in different things - Joe is the main Builder and drives the robot's lift, Tyler is the Project Manager and he drives the base of the robot, Connor is the Programmer and has developed a 2,000 line code for us, Kosei works on CAD designs and has completed a computer model of our whole robot, Caleb manages our engineering notebook in order to make sure every change is properly documented. And Andrew is in charge of our presentations and our poster board.

The 2017 World VEX Robotics Championship tournament takes place in Louisville, Kentucky on April 19-22, 2017. We have less than a month to get ourselves and our robot ready to compete against more than 130 of the best middle school robotics teams in the world, and we're equal parts excited, challenged, daunted, scared, and inspired.

One of the daunting things about going to Kentucky is figuring out how to pay for all six of us to fly there from Los Angeles (and there's no easy way to get to Louisville - we looked!), and how to pay for our housing while we're gone for five days. We have some support from the Peninsula Education Foundation and our school's Booster Club, but even with their help, it doesn't cover everything we'll need to compete at the World Championships. Our team prides itself on being able to do a lot with very little, but we need to start with something and that something is your help. We are fundraising to pay for this trip and we've come up with a plan to give something back for your generosity.

Here's the plan: For every $20 donation we will print your name on our SPONSOR BANNER, which will hang in our booth at the World Championships. It could be your name, your business name, your kid's name, or your dog's name - whatever you choose (within reason). But every $20 donation will add a name to our banner.

Each $150 donor will get their name, or their business name added to the banner AND to our promotional video. This will be viewed at the World Championships, seen by the judges, and posted to our YouTube channel. 

Each $300 donor will get their name or business name added to the banner AND to the back of our competition t-shirts. You'll also get your very own MIST Robotics t-shirt as a thank you gift.

Each $1000 donor will get their name on a t-shirt, get a shirt, and have their 4 ft. banner displayed in our booth at the World Championships.

And if you donate $2500 to our team, you will get to name our robot!

If you prefer to donate via credit card or paypal, click the link below. If you need a 501(c)(3) number for a tax exemption or employer matching fund, send us an e-mail and we'll give you information about where to send a check.

We will also be updating this blog page with photos and stories from our experiences at the World Championships, so please sign up for notifications, or check back often to see what we're up to.

Anything you can do to share this with people you know is a great help, and we are very grateful for all assistance you can provide to our team and program!

We feel extremely lucky to be able to do what we do. Thank you so much for all your support - we can't wait to share our experiences with you!