Several of the school’s VEX robotics teams — 95071R, 95071V, 95071X and 95071Y — traveled to the chilly Midwest on March 16-18 and brought home top results at the CREATE U.S. Open National Championship, a prestigious competition featuring over 150 top teams from all across the U.S., held in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
- Teams 95071V (senior Ruiyan Zhu; juniors Aidan Liu, Samarth Hangud and Ethan Tian; sophomores Graham Gifford and Achyut Karthikeyanand; and freshman Aariv Ganesan and Shijun Liu) won the tournament champion award.
- 95071X (seniors Alec Guan, Richard Lee and Bryan Zhao; junior Kirshna Muddu; sophomore Daniel Yeh and freshmen Jake He, Dhruv Rao and Enzo Zhao) was a Division Champion.
- 95071Y (junior Sethan Sun, sophomore Roger Xu and Magnus Lin and freshman Archer Dickinson, Austen Gho, Dhruv Koppaka, Colin Yi and Winston Wang) won the Division Finalist award.
These teams compete in the VEX Robotics Competition, where small teams of high school and middle school students design, build and program 18 by 18 inch robots to complete a new set of tasks featured in each season’s unique game.
This year’s game, “Push Back,” involves scoring small octadecahedron blocks into four rectangular goals placed around a field. Robots that move blocks into certain “control zones” may receive bonus points.
Each year, high-performing teams qualify for the U.S. Open by winning tournaments and specific awards at those tournaments. For example, teams 95071X and 95071Y qualified for the U.S. Open through winning the Tournament Champions award at a local competition on Oct. 12.
At competitions, 2-team alliances compete against each other for ranking points. Typically, each team competes in 5-15 of these qualification matches to determine their seeding going into the elimination rounds, where teams will be eliminated until they find the final winner.
95071V ranked first in the Red Division and emerged as Tournament Champions
According to Gifford, the team’s driver, when the tournament started, they were nervous because weather-related flight cancellations made it so only three of their eight planned members could attend. In addition, the robot’s intake mechanism kept jamming, likely due to their robot being damaged during the flight.
During the competition, however, these worries quickly vanished as they comfortably claimed the first-place ranking within two hours. Finishing off the first day and continuing the second day, they consistently won their matches, locking them into the first place ranking with a 12-1 record.
95071V went on to win most of their elimination matches by comfortable margins until their division final round when their alliance partner, 7686A Islanders from South Dakota, tipped over.
“Looking back, the division finals match was really the hardest for us because we had to defend both of the robots and in the end, we narrowly won by one point,” Gifford said.
After winning their division, they met their sister team 95071X in the semifinals round, with 95071V landing a decisive win 55-33.
During the grand finals, which followed a “best of three” format, team 95071V lost their first match — forcing them to adapt their strategy if they wanted to make a comeback. This included what types of sacrifice of points they could make if they lost autonomous.
Eventually, they managed to win their matches both by a tight margin of 10 points — leading them to claim the overall title.
“I think a key factor that led us all the way to win the tournament is the fact that our autonomous code was extremely consistent,” Gifford said. ‘This made it easier for the driver to predict where things would be and also easier to communicate with teammates.”.
95071X wins Division Champions for the third year in a row as well as the Think Award
In 2024 and 2025, team 95071X won the Tournament Champions and Tournament Finalists awards respectively, winning their divisions two years in a row.
According to Lee, the team’s driver, the team started strong, winning seven out of eight qualification matches on the first day of qualification matches and ranking within the top four teams in the Blue division. However, due to hardware inconsistencies and strategic blunders, 95071X’s ranking dropped to 10th with a 7-5 win loss record at the end of the second day.
“During our last qualification match, our battery cable unfortunately snapped, causing our robot to disconnect,” Lee said. “Compounded with the variety of other issues that we had faced that day, our team’s stress levels were extremely high.”
Despite dropping in ranking, 95071X was selected into the second seeded alliance by team 91416N S.W.A.T. from Wahoo, Nebraska. Lee noted that during the lunch break, instead of resting, members instead used the time to tune their programming and practice driving.
Going into the elimination rounds, Lee expressed that one of his top priorities was staying calm under pressure and maintaining control of the match.
“I think that over the course of the past four years, I’m pretty comfortable with what I’m able to do on the field,” Lee said. “Throughout the matches, we and S.W.A.T stuck to the strategies that we had discussed before each match, and that helped us both stay focused.”.
In the Division Finals, 95071X and 91416N met against the top-seeded alliance, teams 5069Y Havoc from Omaha, Nebraska, and 59218B Cedar Grove Panthers from Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Ultimately, 95071X and 91416N narrowly won the match by three points — the difference of one scored block.
“We actually lost to Havoc [5069Y] at a previous competition we competed at pretty badly, and I think that now being able to win against such a strong team shows how our team has grown and faces challenges,” Lee said.
In addition to winning the Division Champions award, team 95071X also won the Think Award for their outstanding programming and autonomous routines. According to Yeh, the team’s programmer, the judges were impressed by the team’s effective custom C++ library, as well as unique adaptive programs.
“Before the competition, we created a series of adaptive autonomous routines that could detect how many blocks were each goal, and if it was already filled up, our robot would automatically switch over to a different goal, guaranteeing that we could score the maximum amount of blocks as possible,” Yeh said.
Team 95071Y wins Division Finalist Award
According to Yi, the team’s driver coach, their display at the competition started off strong. After their first four matches, they boasted an undefeated record.
“Our first few matches went smooth, a key component to these victories was driving around the field smoothly and efficiently as well as efficiently keeping track of where the blocks are on the field,” Yi said.
Their next few matches weren’t successful, with the team losing three out of the four matches. Only achieving five wins out of their eight matches on their first day, team 95071Y spent the entire night deciding how to improve. This included talking to their alliance partners more during matches and focusing on playing more safe and consistent rather than risky and aggressive.
On their second day, they won five straight qualification matches, ending their pre-elimination ranking at fifth place with a 10-3 record. Although they were ranked fifth place, they were chosen by 7405R Milburn Riptide from Millburn, New Jersey to become the third seed alliance.
Despite their alliance seeding, many teams doubted how well they would perform. Yi noted that many people thought that they would lose their semifinals match. Despite all the doubt from other teams, team 95071Y managed to win all three matches in the elimination round and made it to the finals.
Although they won the match comfortably with a score of 70-14, the referees called a violation on their gameplay for keeping their “wing” in the goal. Though both 95071Y and 7405R believed that they had not committed this violation and appealed the referees’ decision, they were ultimately disqualified.
“It wasn’t about winning, but it was the feeling that you lost something that you won fair and square,” Yi said.
The SHS VEX teams prepare for the upcoming World Championship in St. Louis
This season, teams 95071V and 95071Y have qualified for the prestigious World Championship at the end of April in St. Louis. Though 95071X has not yet qualified, the team maintains hope that they will receive a spot off the waitlist, which is currently in the process of rolling out qualifications.
“In order not to waste any time, our team is still preparing for Worlds as if we have qualified,” Lee said. “This way, we’ll be ready if we end up qualifying.”
Along with Guan and Bryan, Lee will be graduating from the team at the end of the season. In addition to being proud of the club’s success, Lee also expressed pride in being able to compete and succeed at the highest level. The waitlist for Worlds comes out at the start of April, and while team 95071X hopes to be on it, members like Lee are taking a balanced approach.
“I think that our team has gone through a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, I’m proud of how far we’ve come. If this is the last competition that I compete at, I’ll be happy with how we went out,” he said.
