Maize Career Academy robotics team wins state championship

Six teams from the OneMaize Robotics club competed at state this year. Team 67101V won the state championship for the first time in USD 266 history.

Photo provided by Zack Helgesen

67101V won the robotics state championship for the first time in school history. There are four seniors on the team who have been working towards winning state since they joined the club. When asked how she felt when she found out they had won, team member Brylea Schmidt said, “Honestly I could not believe it. I might have cried a little because I just thought back to joining the team and them explaining to me that they wanted to win state.”

Ainsley Cramer, Reporter
March 16, 2022

On March 5, six robotics teams from the Maize Career Academy competed at the VEX Robotics Competition. Four teams qualified for worlds in Dallas, Texas, which will take place in May.

67101V won the state championship, which has never happened before in Maize. They also won Robotics Skills Challenge Champion and the Excellence Award, which is the highest award received. 

Maize High Senior Brylea Schmidt is the Robotics club president and a part of the team that won state. Her team has been working towards winning state ever since she joined the club two years ago.

Robotics club president Brylea Schmidt posing with the banners her team won at the VEX robotics competition. The team won three awards including the Excellence Award, which is the highest award given. Schmidt’s teammate, Adyson Coopersaid, “We cleaned up at state, winning the tournament, skills, and the Excellence Award which is the most prestigious award in VEX Robotics.” (Photo provided by Zack Helgesen)

The team started off ranked ninth in the tournament and faced lots of challenges throughout the day, but in the end, their hard work paid off.

“We were in last place,” Schmidt said, “During the match, I felt defeated but we just kept doing the best we could do. That weekend I learned that you cannot control everything. Sometimes you just have to do your best and everything will work out for the good.”

Robotics coach Zack Helgesen said that at the end of the qualification rounds their best teams were in last place, but they pulled through in the elimination rounds, sending them to the quarterfinals.

Helgesen said he knew by the end of the quarterfinals that one of their teams was bringing home a state banner.

“I was full of pride,” Helgesen said, “67101V, the team that won, was composed of almost all seniors. Three years ago when I took over this program, they told me that they wanted to win a state banner and go to worlds. That moment was the realization of a dream that they have been pouring into over the last four years.”