Elwood Middle School proudly hosted one of the VEX IQ competitions on Dec. 15. The event was the largest one to date on Long Island as the school welcomed 30 different robot teams from 8 different schools and organizations.

Presented by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, the event challenged teams of students with designing and building a robot to play against other middle school teams in a game-based engineering challenge. STEM concepts were tested as students learned lifelong skills in teamwork, leadership, communications and more.  

“It is nice to see more teams and schools participating in VEX IQ competitions,” said Elwood Middle School’s robotics and technology club advisor Matthew McGuire. “This is the largest VEX IQ competition on Long Island yet, with larger competitions to come as many other districts are jumping into VEX IQ robotics now.”

Teams had the opportunity to compete for a number of different awards in the competition. These included an Excellence Award, Create Award, Judges Award, Amaze Award, Robot Skills Champion Award and more.

Elwood had six robotic teams participate in the competition with one winning the Design Award and another winning the Teamwork Champion Award.

“We have several more competitions this year at other schools and hope to continue to have our students take home more awards,” said Mr. McGuire.