VEX Robotics Competition

As shown above, I was published in the Ashburn magazine for my accomplishment! It was my first year competing in VEX Robotics and we won the Virginia State Championship! Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to attend the World Championship in-person, but qualifying is still a feat nonetheless!

Ashburn Magazine (Page 28): https://issuu.com/leesburgtoday/docs/ashburn_nov_dec_2020_web 

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I continued making strides by qualifying

for the World Championship again. This time, it was different - we won first place in our division and received the

Excellence Award, the most prestigious honor a team can earn in VEX. Dive into my world-winning engineering notebook to feel like part of the team by exploring how I engineered and programmed our robot: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12JHv3pNCW4ZCtbxyY_V_g7k4L2Xk5UX1vj_GEphTtgI/edit?usp=sharing

It was during this year I realized that high school VEX teams and middle school VEX teams are on completely different levels. Middle schoolers join VEX to explore and dip their toes  into the field of robotics, but high schoolers in VEX pull all-nighters and even skip AP exams, driven by an intense desire to win. Although I wasn't able to qualify for the World Championship that year, I was able to learn new robotics-related concepts along the way from the senior high schoolers.  

Last year was a revelation. I knew that I would have to put in triple the effort and work ten times harder if I wanted to even advance to the World Championship. Well, let me say that I did just that. Not only did I qualify for the World Championship, but I won the Design Award, giving praise to my meticulous details in my engineering notebook. But what was even better was that I finally got to experience the World Championship in-person in Texas (won our pink cowboy hats by going off on a side quest and winning a challenge during the competition).

As the primary programmer and engineer, I led my team to be a four-time consecutive state finalist and a three-time international finalist. This journey however was filled with its fair share of grueling tasks, from CADing new modules just days before a competition to sacrificing entire weekends to tune the robot. But no matter what, I embraced every challenge with determination and enthusiasm!

The following are links to newspapers and magazines that have featured my achievements in the VEX Robotics Competition in 10th grade!

Loudoun Now Newspaper: https://www.loudounnow.com/news/ashburn-all-girls-robotics-team-wins-design-award-at-robotics-world-championship/article_e475d172-f4e6-11ed-937a-7f1fc4a69019.html 

Loudoun Times-Mirror Newspaper: https://www.loudountimes.com/news/rock-ridge-robotics-team-wins-design-award-at-vex-robotics-world-championship/article_9e92223c-f8c9-11ed-a760-abf380bd18f2.html 

Ashburn Magazine (Page 12): https://e.issuu.com/embed.html?d=ashburn_july_august_2023&pageLayout=singlePage&u=leesburgtoday 

Rock Ridge High School Newspaper:

https://theblazerrhs.com/6624/news/vex-robotics-team-ex-machina-wins-design-award-progress-to-worlds/