Sparta Robotics team competes at World Championships

This year Sparta High School’s robotics team earned a trip to the VEX World Championships, held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, last week for the largest robotics competition in the world. The Sparta team was among 800 of the world’s best, according to a Sparta High School representative, with over 20,000 teams registered from 50 countries.

Sparta’s robotics team competed in 10 qualifiers, seven of which they won. This enabled them to be selected as an Alliance Captain and compete in the division tournament. However, after what was described as “an intense single elimination match,” they were knocked out of the tournament, concluding there season.

Now that the Sparta Robotics team has made it to the World Championships and earned their way in the division tournament, they are now considered in the top 2% out of 20,000 high school and middle school teams worldwide.

Awards won include the Innovation Award, for the team’s power take-off system; the Think Award, which was granted for the coding of 16 various autonomous behaviors; the Design Award, given for the team’s “process-driven design” and engineering journal; the State Championship Design Award, also for the team’s “superior process-driven design” and engineering journal; and an honorable mention at the world championships for “process, presentation, and engineering journal.”

Head Coach Mark Meola said, “This year Sparta Robotics Z team continued a long history of excellence. Like Z teams before them, this year’s team set high standards and worked exceptionally hard to achieve their objectives. They are exceptional engineers and have demonstrated the ability to control both their design and their process to such an extent that it produced such an excellent outcome. They are all amazing young people and will have profound and positive impacts on the future. I am so very proud of each of them!”

Assistance Coach Margaret Incantalupo said of the students on the team, “ Sarah, Nick, Shaelin, Tanner, Anthony and Hayden represented Sparta High School at the highest level of competition. Their teamwork and ability to remain calm under pressure during fierce matches combined with their excellent design, engineering, coding, driving and negotiation skills earned them a winning record. We couldn’t be more proud [sic] of them.”