Christina Maru, Aayushi Hansalia, Charles Ma and Kristy Kaneshige pose with their bronze medals from the District Five SkillsUSA contest. The team competed in Applied Engineering. Wylie High students also earned gold medals in Mobile Robotics and gold and silver in Urban Search and Rescue Robotics. Courtesy photo

Students came home with gold, silver and bronze medals after the District Five SkillsUSA contest held the weekend of Feb. 20. Students who earned gold and silver qualified for the state competition in Corpus Christi in April.

Sevy Wang and Kyle Quick earned gold in Mobile Robotics. In Urban Search and Rescue Robotics, Dylan Ostrom and Anvitha Kommera earned gold and Katy Sharp and Ava Griess earned silver. Christina Maru, Aayushi Hansalia, Charles Ma and Kristy Kaneshige earned bronze medals in Applied Engineering.

According to SkillsUSA Advisor Morris Goldade, the competitions assess teamwork and interview skills in addition to technical skills such as engineering, coding and robot driving.

“The primary difference between the two competitions lies in the specific task objectives assigned to the robots,” Goldade said.

Qualifying teams will analyze their performance in order to practice and refine areas needing improvement before the state competition.

While they prepare for April, the students also keep busy with other contests. Three teams representing AHMO Robotics competed in the VEX Robotics Region 5 State competition on Saturday, March 1. Meghan Heller, Aayushi Hansalia, Wang and Quick qualified to compete in the CREATE U.S. Nationals Open in Iowa at the end of the month.

“This is a national competition with 200 teams,” Goldade said.

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