Update: The Santa Clara Weekly ran a great article about the two middle school VEX Robotics teams! http://www.santaclaraweekly.com/2014/Issue-14/local_students_win_state_robotics_championship.html

Mar. 19, 2014
In mid-February, Shafieen Ibrahim, grade 7, participated in the 2014 US Amateur Team West chess tournament, winning two games to help his team advance to the playoffs. Ibrahim needed only one win for his team to advance, but he won two games in a row against higher-rated players. His NorCal House Team now moves on to Nationals. Last year at Nationals, the team beat Princeton to become the National Champions. “We were at a loss for words when Coach Ted Castro of NorCal House of Chess informed us that Shafieen was selected for this very high-profile team as their board four player,” said him mom, Zeba. Playoffs are on March 29. Good luck Shafieen!

The following was submitted by Harker parent Sanjay Sengupta (Anooshree, grade 8): Last weekend, Harker middle school teams Raining Sunshine and EagleBots  won the California State VEX Robotics Tournament championship hosted at the Great America Park in Santa Clara, Calif. Raining Sunshine team members (all grade 8) are: Maya Kumar, Mona Lee, Anooshree Sengupta, Jessica Susai and Aria Coalson. EagleBots team members (all grade 7) are: Rithvik Panchapakesan, Christopher Gong, Andrew Chang and Kaushik Shivakumar.

At the State Championship, Raining Sunshine won every qualifying match and ranked at the top of the field of 27 teams from across California. They received four awards including the State Tournament Championship, the Think Award for the best autonomous program, the Amaze Award for overall robot quality, and the Robot Skills Award for robot driving skills. Going into the elimination rounds, they selected as their alliance partners the EagleBots from Harker Middle School and the GrizzlyBots from Grange Middle School in Fairfield. The alliance proved to be invincible as they cruised through the elimination rounds without giving up a single match, and won the Tournament Champions Award.

Prior to this, Raining Sunshine won the Champions Award at the VEX Middle School Tournament held in Fairfield, CA on February 22. The team also took home the Programming Skills and Robot Skills awards at that event. The win in Fairfield qualified the team to compete in the California State Championship.

Now, with the State Championship in the bag, the teams move on to the VEX World Championship Tournament in Anaheim California April 24-26. The World event hosts over 140 middle school teams from many states across the US as well as teams from the Americas, China, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.

VEX Robotics is the leading and fastest growing robotics program for middle school and high school level students. VEX Robotics competitions are held in cities, states and countries all over the world. In addition to providing a platform to learn engineering and programming, a VEX Robotics project encourages teamwork, leadership and problem solving.