New Jersey high school makes history, earns top prize at Robotics World Championship
MILLBURN, New Jersey (WABC) -- History was made for a team of students from a New Jersey high school who took home the top prize at the VEX Robotics World Championship.
Millburn High School first won the Science Division to advance to the World Championship Round Robin finals in Kentucky.
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The students then defeated the Research Division champions from China in the finals.
Millburn is the first New Jersey team to ever win the World Championship title.
The team's students masterminded all the tools and innovation to make their robot a winner. The students are hooked on engineering, driving and coding.
"A lot of the thing in robotics is build, fail, redesign," said senior Javier Coindreau.
The Millburn team came up with a strategy to combine speed, mobility and great coding to defeat the opposition.
"We could create our own functions like move forward, move backward, turn, and we can call those whenever we wanted," said senior Jack Mansfield.
The object of the complex looking competition was simple: get flags and discs turned to your team colors.
That kind of brain power led to these high school kids capturing the top prize in Louisville, knocking the opposing team off the top.
"It feels amazing," said senior Bryan Levine. "We have a great community, great teachers, all the kids have been a great help..it's awesome."
It came down to a team from China going move for move with the team from Millburn. Over 6,000 fans watched the hysteria when the scoreboard showed the Millburn team won the top prize.
"I still honestly can't believe that it happened or that we were able to get this far," said senior Sarah Rose. "It's truly wonderful to see all the hard work these individuals have put into, synthesizing into something so great."
Now they're all medal winners. It is like capturing the Super Bowl of robotic competitions for these future innovators and their school leaders.
"Outside of your family, it's the greatest feeling in the world and the best part is it lasts forever," said robotics instructor David Farrell. "It's a vindication and validation of what we're all about."
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