The VEX Robotics program grows worldwide each year and teams get increasingly competitive. Fewer spots in the World Championship are available to Michigan teams since only a finite number can attend the event, this year being held in Dallas, Texas on May 6th - 8th.
Despite the odds, with 80 of the top teams in the State competing for only 12 World Championship invitations, Cranbrook earned three of those very hard-fought World Championship spots.
Headed for the World Championship
For the first time ever, a CK upper school team, 39H, won the highest honor at the VEX Michigan State Championship. The Excellence Award is given to a team with the highest combined rankings of high-quality match performance, high-quality engineering notebook, high-quality individual driving skill, high-quality autonomous code execution, and high-quality interview. The team also won the Individual Robot Skills Challenge - another first for CK at the High School State Championship.
In addition, CK team 39V reached the finals of the tournament elimination bracket by winning their division (comprised of 40 teams) and playing in the two-out-of-three final round match up against the other divisional champion team.
And finally, a third CK team, 39K, won a judged award called Amaze which is given to a team that has the most consistently high scoring and reliable robot for both driver and autonomous modes as well as the best verbal and written explanation for how they developed and consistently executed a successful game strategy to solve this year's challenge.
All three of these teams earned their place at the VEX Robotics World Championship this year.
Congratulations to Team 39H (Rishi Patel, Hriday Patel, Steve Rho, Summer Su, Sanjay Lokam, Lisa Li, Rai-Chen Yu, and Sophia Tang) for winning both the Excellence Award and the Robot Skills Champion Award.
Congratulations to Team 39V (Eric Jiang, Simon Hu, Jessica Jeyasingh, Victori Shao, Jerry Zhang, and Ryan Wei) for winning their Division and earning the State Championship Finalist Award.
Congratulations to Team 39K (Stanley Wang, Vineet Saravanan, Yi-An Liao, Tony Dong, Davy Wang, Alan Ju, Ryan Kan) for winning the Amaze Award.
The Road to the State Championship
After hundreds of hours of lab time, two 3-session league events, seven tournaments, and two Signature Events, Cranbrook’s robotics qualifying season came to an end last week with one team advancing to the quarter finals at the Kalahari Signature Event, two teams winning the CK hosted league in January, one team reaching the finals of the final state-qualification opportunity in Imlay City, and as of this past Sunday, one team earning the very last open state-qualification spot with their ranking on the States Skills List!
A remarkable eleven Cranbrook teams qualified for the VEX High School Robotics State Championship held this past weekend at Kettering University.
- Team 39E (Christopher Dodge, Taliyah Murray, Roshni Senthil, Louis Kim, Huy Phan, Esther Fakunle)
- Team 39G (George Papa and Victor Papa)
- Team 39H (Rishi Patel, Hriday Patel, Steve Rho, Summer Su, Sanjay Lokam, Lisa Li, Rai-Chen Yu, and Sophia Tang)
- Team 39J (Riya Nambiar, Joy Chen, Rhea Chokhalingam, Samantha Chen)
- Team 39K (Stanley Wang, Vineet Saravanan, Yi-An Liao, Tony Dong, Davy Wang, Alan Ju, Ryan Khan)
- Team 39M (Sarah Su, Nick Zhang, Michelle Xu, Andrew Liu)
- Team 39T (Zubin Namei, Suhaas Maddipatia, Zihan Qing, Sammy Perdomo-Rosenbaum, Michael Wu)
- Team 39V (Eric Jiang, Simon Hu, Jessica Jeyasingh, Victori Shao, Jerry Zhang, and Ryan Wei)
- Team 39W (Ian Qian, David Jiang, Bill Cui, Akshaj Muchumarri, and Mark Khrikolov)
- Team 39Y (Albert Rho, Abby Nguyen, Thomas Chen, Mandy Chen, Lauren Hong, and Qiyun Chen)
- Team 39Z (Nabhah Veeramani, Stanley Shen, Omar Khan, Srinidhi Palanichamy, Vik Sampath, Akilesh Bharat)