Doing the unbelievable - our VEX team

On February 16th, 2019, Milpitas Xtreme Robotic's brand new VEX team competed in their first competition - ever. Many of us had never even attended a robotics competition before, but we all walked away as semifinalists out of 19 teams and the winners of the Sportsmanship Award from the 2019 VEX Robotics Competition: Turning Point.

From the left to right, first row to third row, are; Ryan T, Eugene N, Chenghao L, Alex P, Tahoe R, Kireeti C, Aishah J, Stacy P, Katie D, Toni G, Chloe W, Patrick L, Maxwell M, Thai N, Alex F, and Kyle F.

MXR's first VEX team in a decade, VEX 1669X led by Eugene Ng and Chenghao Li, spent hours pouring over their robot on Saturday, Feb 16. The competition started off badly for us, with difficulties and challenges that our builders and programmers constantly sought to overcome.

Our VEX team faced a constant barrage of obstacles from day one, starting with no knowledge in VEX and limited resources. Our participation in VEX was made possible by a GirlPowered grant, but the kit that was to ship did not arrive until slightly less than 3 weeks before the competition. Some parts did not arrive until even the Friday right before comp. Most teams at the tournament have been building their robots since summer of 2018, and have been working for over 30 weeks at that point, but ours was barely started. A lack of funding for the club meant that far more expensive but useful parts that gave robots an edge could not be bought for our team. Trying to do the best we could, our team took pains to get hold of a few things we needed, including borrowing from a VEX team in Sunnyvale - a huge thanks to team Paradigm!

Despite the challenges though, MXR made it into the quarterfinals, allied with VEX team 33631A (the Creative Maniacs from EA Robotics Club). Then, with the hard work of our drivers, we were able to win our quarterfinal match.

At the end of the competition, Milpitas Xtreme Robotics won the Sportsmanship Award and were semifinalists. We were stunned, and immensely proud, to have done so well in our first VEX competition. We may not have placed first, but we won. We were able to learn, do well, and give our members and others an unforgettable experience - therefore, it was definitely a victory for us.

All of us look forward to growing in our experiences together for competitions to come, and we all hope to do even better next year!