VEXWorlds

VEXWorlds was amazing! They called it "The Olympics of Robotics" at the opening ceremony, and they weren't kidding - over 30 countries sent their best teams to compete in the middle school, high school, and college competitions, and we took up the entire Kentucky Expo center.

They divided the middle school teams into two 80-team divisions, Our division - Spirit - was really tough, with most of the Chinese teams competing in it. We had heard about the Chinese teams after Nationals - they had just dominated everything with their big, defensive robots, and they were definitely ready to do the same thing at Worlds.

As you can see from our photos, we had sequined fedora hats and pink ties with LED lights to wear, which turned out to be really useful for our parents to find us in the big event hall when it was dark. We also spent a lot of time setting up our booth with things like the lego model of our robot that Joe built, a projector showing the latest movie we made about our robot, the computer with the CAD design Kosei had created, our presentation board that Andrew and Caleb did, the sponsor banner, and a big map with flags from all the countries attached to pins for visitors to put where they were from.


The random selection of alliances and opponents didn't really go in our favor. Of the ten matches we were scheduled in, all but three of them paired us with teams ranked lower than 50th, and way too many of them opposed teams in the top 20. We also had some bad luck against the Chinese robots, which stood at the fence and blocked whatever we tried to throw. They knocked our robot over twice, and one time they dropped a cube under our base so we couldn't get back up. Those matches weren't fun at all, though we definitely adjusted our game strategy because of it.

The best part of the first day was our interview with the two judges from our division. They spent about twenty minutes talking to us at our booth about everything - Tyler and Joe talked a lot about our design and build process, Caleb talked about the engineering notebook that he was in charge of, the scientific method Andrew used on our display board, and the budget he kept, Kosei's CAD design, the coding for all the autonomous programs that Connor designed, and even our world map, and the fundraising we did to get us to Kentucky. It was a pretty great interview, and all of us had something to say about our own jobs on the team, and about things the other guys did.

The next day we won two of our matches, but overall we didn't do as well as we wanted to. Then the judges came back and asked some specific questions about our coding, and about an hour later, two different judges came over to talk about the autonomous programming. Connor was able to show them all the different programs he'd designed, and those two guys spent about twenty minutes with us talking about code.

On the final day of competition we had a problem with our base that had to be fixed, and we managed to win another match, but overall it wasn't enough to get us a spot in the quarter finals. We had just finished taking photos with the two Peninsula High School teams and raced back to watch the finals when the judges started giving out their awards, We were stunned when they called "7035M" up to receive the Think Award for exceptional programming accomplishments!

The VEXWorlds awards are way bigger than anything we got in regular competitions, and our Think Award is going to look good in Mr. Nimick's STEM room. Getting that award was definitely a highlight of the whole tournament!

Interestingly, the three-team alliance that won the middle school VEXWorlds championship was made of two Chinese teams and one from Singapore that we had gone up against (and lost to) during our qualifying matches. The competition was fierce, and we learned as much from the teams who beat us, as from our wins. The grand finale of the whole tournament was a reveal of the new VEX EDR game for next year, and we've been talking about what kind of robot to build, and how to code it since we left Kentucky.

We never could have accomplished everything we did this year without our teacher/mentor/coach, Mr. Nimick, and we didn't tell him that we submitted his name for consideration for Robotics Teacher of the Year to the VEXWorlds committee with this letter:

            Imagine waking up every morning and having to take a 30 minute commute to work. Next you arrive at 7:30 and have to teach 6 different classes, to 6th graders who can’t sit still for more than 20 minutes. Next you have to educate 7th graders who can’t seem to follow the directions on the page, and 8th graders who ask questions, where the answer to them is constantly changing due to new advances in technology. After that long day of work you have to mentor 28 kids on four separate teams and guide them on the correct path to create complex machines.

            Mr. Nimick doesn’t have to imagine this, because this is his everyday life. He sacrifices so much of his time to be with us. He guide us on our way by providing resources and helping us solve problem on our own by using the VEX forum and encouraging use to test out prototypes and to find the best possible solution. He never gives us the answer to our problems, but rather he give us the necessary steps so that we are able to find the answer on our own and learn how to problem-solve; then every time we have a problem we don’t need an adult's help. Instead we use our resources such as the internet to see if anyone else is having that problem, along with the necessary steps to solve the problem. He gives up  hours that he could be spending with his family in order to make sure that we have enough time to construct, test, and practice to be competitive in tournaments. He often extends past his usual five and a half hours per week, and opens up the classroom for up to 7 hours on the weekend without pay to ensure that we are as prepared as possible for our competitions. Mr. Nimick gave up even more time to organize and run a VEX tournament that was rated one of the most well run tournaments in Southern California.

            He has also given up even more Saturdays to take us to competitions, and even if we don't do well in them he always makes sure that we learn valuable lessons from them so that we can learn from our mistakes and be even more prepared for our next competition. He makes sure that everything​ thing we do is logical and thought through. He encourages us to use the design process as much as possible, and to document our work about our redesign, our progress, and the aftermath of a competition. Mr. Nimick has given countless hours towards the VEX robotics program, from weekend to late nights. He has coached 4 years in a row and never even considered stopping because he is dedicated to the success and innovation of the next generation, and he wants to make sure that he is able to help us achieve greatness, and lead innovation in the future.

Thanks to Mr. Nimick for three years of robotics, and for being such a generous and awesome mentor and teacher. We worked hard to get to the VEXWorld Championships, but we couldn't have done it without him, or the support of our parents, or the very generous donations from our friends, family, and community.

Going to VEXWorlds was an amazing experience that will stay with all of us for a very long time.