Last week robotics team 6299 A.K.A Quad X went to St. Louis for the first FTC championships. They competed with 127 other teams from across the globe as well other teams from across the country. The team placed third out of 128.

“There are over 3400 teams in the world that competed this season. They also set a world record for highest combined match score of 827 points,” robotics coach, Gala Goodreau said.

Quad X members are freshmen Raj Desai, Joshua Johnson, Linnea May, Nicolas Morales, and Lizzy Patterson, sophomores Eddie Bates and Regan Gibson, and juniors Jacob Greenway, Sahil Mehta, Tyler Roach, and Peter Sarkis.

“I love being able to get to know everybody. There are so many different people that we get to compete with and against and it’s a really cool experiance,” Junior Sahil Mehta

Vandegrift has had at least one robotics team go to worlds every year for the last three year but Quad X was the only one out of all six teams to advance to worlds this year. They had to advance through all three levels of competition to make it to where they did.

“An aspect that helped our team go to worlds out of the six teams at Vandegrift was how we tried to keep everything in perspective. We know that even if we aren’t first, its self-improvement that really matters,” Freshmen Lizzy Patterson said.

Quad X was one of six teams here at Vandegrift. They had one of the most innovative designs at the school and worked really well together. They had one of the fastest robots which helped them advance in each round of competition.

“When I was with my team I tried to bring a positive outlook and encouragement to the table. I always tried to encourage everyone even when things weren’t going as smooth as possible,” Patterson said.