A group of students at Bellevue West have started a robotics club to compete in Vex Robotics Competitions for prizes and the possibility of jobs.

The Vex Robotics competition is a day where students, who put months of work building their own robot, compete in various challenges to claim victory for their school. According to sophomore Justin Garrison, the group’s co-founder along with Aaron Moss, Vex Robotics is a competition where people fight their robots against each other in hopes of prizes and victory.

”Vex Robotics is a competition where teams build machines for a specific task from the approved Vex building kits and then use them in competitions. They were designed for hopefully earning more points than competitors,” Garrison said.

The group meets every Thursday in Mr. Parkison’s room at 3:30.

“I was approached by Aaron with the idea and found it to be interesting so I am actively helping him assemble the group,” Garrison said.

This group of students do wish to make this club an official Vex team but are facing many problems, mostly with getting known.

“Obviously recognition [is an issue] along with membership and sponsorships,” Garrison said.

This club is not only for their enjoyment, as there are many benefits for this competition. Scholarships may be awarded to winning teams and job opportunities can be made available for students who advance in this area.

“Hopefully if we can get sponsors we will be able to provide interactions with the field of engineering,” Garrison said. “But whether or not we get a sponsor, we will be teaching the members the coding language required to operate the robotics systems with the help of the Java teacher, Mr. Parkison.”

These students’ dream to make a competition robotics club has some progress to make before this club turns into the real deal, but they are willing to work for their dream.

Christian Stough
Guest Reporter