North Forsyth High School’s robotics club, Raider Robotics, had four teams qualify for the VEX robotics state championship at Ola High School in McDonough, GA during the weekend of March 2-3. Teams 3536S, 3536M, 3536R, and 3536Y represented North Forsyth High School this past weekend, and while the teams did not advance to the quarter finals, all students who went felt they had a meaningful experience.

To qualify for the state championship, teams are required to achieve one of the following prestigious awards at a qualifying VEX competition: Design, Excellence, Tournament Champion, or Highest Skills Score. Design award is awarded to a team with an excellent, different and unique robot design as well as a stellar engineering notebook. Excellence award is awarded to an efficient, creative robot with a high scoring skills score and a team that has advanced into the quarterfinals of a qualifying competition. Tournament champion is awarded to the winning team of a competition. Highest skills score is awarded to the team whose robot is capable of scoring the most amount of points.

Students Maria DeSouza, Ramya Raja, Owen Taylor, Andrew Collett, Logan Swafford, Eric Laurin and Jacob Nickles, all brought their robots to the competition and scored well during the qualifying rounds.