With The VEX5, the robot they’d designed and built in science class, a team of five fifth-graders from Sts. Peter and Paul School in Richmond competed at the 2016 Vex Worlds, an international robotics competition, April 20-23 in Louisville, Kentucky.
As one of 147 teams in the elementary school division of the VEX IQ Challenge, they had to master picking up and moving a series of balls. After 10 rounds of challenges, the Richmond team ranked in the middle of the pack. Three years ago, another team of Sts. Peter and Paul’s fifth-graders participated.
A St. Cloud team, with Emma Leighton and Ava Reisinger, sixth-graders at St. Katharine Drexel School, St. Cloud, and Morgan Zieglmeier, a fifth-grader at Westwood Elementary School, St. Cloud, placed 49th in the middle school division. They earned 28th place in the one-minute programming skills competition, in which robots drive and score points themselves. It was the first year their team participated.