Months of hard work have finally paid for two robotics students.

Because they placed first in a regional contest in February, Wylie High juniors Jaron Zell and Sophia Casas will head to the SkillsUSA state robotics competition in Corpus Christi Thursday, April 4.

The students were also on a four-person team that made it to state at the VEX robotics competition but didn’t advance to the world competition.

During VEX, teams are randomly paired up and go through several matches a day.

“There’s two robots on the red team and two robots on the blue team,” said WHS robotics teacher Morris Goldade. “We have nine flags, and both red and blue caps, and a platform. The object is to score as many things to your color as possible by building a robot that shoots balls, flips caps and has the capability to park on the yellow platform. The goal is to flip all the caps and flags to your color. Whichever alliance – red alliance or blue alliance – throws the most points wins that game.”

For the full story, see the April 3 issue or subscribe online.

By Morgan Howard • [email protected]