Cherry Hill East Sends Three Teams to Robotics World Championships

The Cherry Hill East High School Robotics Club sent three teams to the VEX Robotics World Championship in Anaheim last week, including one team that advanced to the quarterfinals and another team that was attending the event for the third time.

The school has sent teams to the event for five straight years, but this was the most successful year for the club, according to adviser Joe Dilks.

Only five teams from New Jersey qualified for the event, and the other two came from South Orange and the Ranney School in Tinton Falls.

There were 750 teams from elementary, middle, high schools and colleges, and about 13,000 students from 26 countries participating in the event.

The VEX Robotics World Championships is an engineering challenge presented in the form of a game. Students, with guidance from their teachers and mentors, use the VEX Robotics Design System to build innovative robots designed to score the most points possible in qualification matches, elimination matches and Skills Challenges.

The robots participate in 215 qualifying matches, and each matchup features alliances of robots, created at random.

In addition to having a great time and building amazing robots, through their participation in the VEX Robotics Competition and their work within their team, students will learn many academic and life skills.

Students from all over the world compete locally in matches to qualify to compete at the world championships. The students from Cherry Hill East competed in many different events, beginning in June. They competed throughout Maryland and New Jersey.

The finals were held at the Anaheim Convention Center. The event took place over three days, and Frightening Lightening, making its second trip to the event, advanced to the quarterfinal round of the Arts Division of the competition. Deus Vex Machina made the trip for the first time, competing in the Engineering Divisiom. Black Tie Robotics made its third appearance, and competed in the Technology Division.

Cherry Hill East competed against teams from Canada, China, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia.

The results for each of the three days for the Cherry Hill East teams:

Day 1:

Ranking           Team                           Record

25/86   #2616B-Black Tie Robotics         2-1-0

26/86   #2616D-Deus Vex Machina        2-1-0

36/86   #2616F-Frightening Lightening   2-1-0

Day 2:

Ranking           Team                           Record

22/86   #2616B-Black Tie Robotics        5-3-0

24/86   #2616D-Deus Vex Machina        5-3-0

39/86   #2616F-Frightening Lightening   4-4-0

Day 3:

Ranking           Team                           Record

44/86   #2616B-Black Tie Robotics        5-5-0

14/86   #2616D-Deus Vex Machina        7-3-0

37/86   #2616F-Frightening Lightening   5-5-0

--Information supplied by Jay Klein