On Saturday, April 27, the Brentwood Academy middle school robotics team was awarded the VEX Robotics World Championship Excellence Award at the competition (considered to be the largest STEM competition in the world) which included 30,000 people and 1,650 teams from 40 nations around the world. Watch the Brentwood Academy middle school robotics team receive their award above.
Team “9364X” earned the Excellence Award, the highest award in the competition which was presented by Google, for overall excellence in creating a high quality VEX Robotics program.
“Taking home a World Champion award is a major milestone that exemplifies perseverance, ingenuity and sportsmanship which is the cornerstone of the competition,” said Dan Mantz, CEO of the REC (Robotics Education and Competition) Foundation, which presents the world competition each year.
“Winning the Excellence Award is like taking a gold medal at the STEM Olympics,” explained Chris Allen, Brentwood Academy’s robotics team director. “This is a huge honor for our school, state and country. I am so energized by our students’ work and perseverance. This is the first time a team from the state of Tennessee has earned such an honor.”
The four members of Team 9364X are seventh grade students: Tate Cho, Emily Melton, Alex Nguyen, and Anna Grace Wooten. Earlier this year, in preparation for this year’s World Competition, the team produced a video featuring their take on how robotics has been beneficial to them:
“Robotics teaches you how to advocate for yourself. You have to go into judged interviews. In those interviews, you have to talk about your robot and how you built it. This will help you later in life with job interviews.” —Tate Cho.
“Robotics teaches you perseverance because when you build a robot you don’t always get it right at first.” —Emily Melton
“Robotics teaches me how to communicate and how to treat others even when you don’t have the same opinion.” —Alex Nguyen
“Robotics teaches you how to interact with all people and people with different backgrounds.” —Anna Grace Wooten
The REC Foundation’s VEX Robotics World Championship is presented by the Northrop Grumman Foundation along with other global sponsors that support the program year-round and at the world championship include: Autodesk, Dell, Google, HEXBUG, IFI NASA, Rack Solutions, Robomatter, Tesla, Texas Instruments, Toyota, TVA, VEX Robotics, MathWorks, Microchip, UPS, Nordson, Nissan, Robot Mesh, Advanced Manufacturing and Logistic Network, Kentucky Tourism, Arts & Heritage Cabinet, Maker Mobile, Inc., TATA consulting, and ZEON. For more information, please visit http://www.vexworlds.com.
