LifePlus HS VEX Robotics Competition 2025

The thrill of our annual High School VEX Robotics Competition returned last week. We were delighted to host the competition once more and to welcome schools from around the country. This year’s competition was called High Stakes, and just as the name suggests, the field introduced new obstacles, including a four-foot ladder with a high stake on top. From beginning to end, the two-day competition was packed with determination, teamwork, and, of course, robots.

Matches started with a 15 second autonomous period where drivers would take their hands off the controls and let the robots operate solely with coding. Once the winner of the autonomous period was announced, drivers took control again.

In each match, there were two alliances – a red alliance and a blue one. Alliances were made up of two teams. The major object of this year’s matches was to place rings on stakes to earn points. There were 24 red rings and 24 blue rings. Competitors could earn points by putting rings on the stakes but could earn additional points or take away competitors’ points through certain actions. To receive additional points, participants could place stakes on mobile goals with rings into two different corners that would ultimately double those points. To take away competitors’ points, they could place stakes on mobile goals with rings into the other two corners. Drivers could also have robots climb the four-foot ladder and receive three points at the first level, six points at the second level, or twelve points at the third level.

Another aspect of the competition was the judging process. Judges reviewed teams’ engineering notebooks and interviewed members as part of the process for selecting recipients of awards. This year saw two tournament champions and nine awards were handed out – the Amaze Award, Build Award, Create Award, Think Award, Judges Award, Sportsmanship Award, Innovate Award, Design Award, and Excellence Award.

Congratulations to our 82S team, which received the Amaze Award! A few of the requirements for this award are ensuring “programming is effective at solving the game challenges for both Qualification Matches and Skills Challenge Matches,” “team interview demonstrates effective communication skills, teamwork, professionalism, and a student-centered ethos,” and “the Engineering Notebook is consistent with the qualities demonstrated in the team interview and robot design.”

Thank you to every school who joined us last week. Thank you to all judges and volunteers who made the competition possible and successful. Thank you, as well, to the volunteer of the year, Marcus P!

This weekend, we have one of our Middle School and two of our High School robotics teams traveling to Guangzhou to participate in the National VEX Robotics Competition.