SHERBURNE – On March 4, three teams from Sherburne-Earlville attended the New York State Vex Robotics Championships, competing amongst 67 other northern New York State teams.

When the competition was over, Sherburne-Earlville juniors Blake Smith and Avery Solloway walked away with the championship and a spot at the world finals in St. Louis.

The Sherburne-Earlville School District celebrated the win with a parade in honor of the students on Monday afternoon. 

VEX Robotics is a middle school and high school robotics competition with more than 20,000 teams in 50 countries playing worldwide. Each year, a new engineering challenge is presented and students have to design, build and program a robot that can complete the tasks. This year’s task challenged students to find a way to pick up plastic blocks, load them into goals. The round starts with an autonomous period in which the robots have to be able to operate without being controlled by students.

This year, Sherburne had 10 students compete on three different teams. All three teams qualified for the state competition.

“SE's robotics is not just a club, it also has an attached dedicated class that starts in the middle school and feeds into the program. The team gets 40 minutes of class time every day, and sometimes more when students come in during lunch and study halls, as well as two hours or more of after school time just about every day,” explained robotics teacher Wesley Macker.

Macker and club advisor Jon Ryan, attributed the success of the program to the dedication of the students.

“Blake and Avery are also trisport athletes, they are very short on time. Many of the other members do at least one sport or other club activities,” Ryan said. “This is a huge commitment. You have to pick that you want to be there. These kids come in over breaks and during summer vacation. They choose to do this.”

Solloway has participated in robotics since 8th grade. In her first year, her team automatically qualified to go to Worlds. “There were three teams competing as middle schoolers, and there were three slots for middle school teams to go to worlds,” Macker and Ryan explained, but they added that the team was deserving of the opportunity.  Last year, the team was just three points away from qualifying for worlds.

Smith is in his third year of robotics, but he is no stranger to the competition. His older brother Brayden Smith was a founding member of Sherburne’s robotics team and was giving the Amaze Award, a judges award which was given to him at states for having a consistently high scoring robot, his first year.   

“The most challenging part of robotics is definitely problem solving and overcoming challenges,” Smith said. In a typical robotics competition, once teams are ranked they pick alliance partners who they will be teamed with for the duration of the competition. “I really like the teamwork aspect of it. Getting to work random other schools and sharing ideas,” Smith said.

For Solloway, the best part of robotics is getting to be creative and problem solve. “The most challenging part is communicating how we want the robot to function and look in a way that makes sense to both of us.”

“Robotics isn’t just for nerds,” Smith said., “There’s a bunch of different aspects and roles that are needed to complete a team.” Smith plans to go to college for engineering and use what he has learned in robotics to help him get there.

“Our program is a wonderful way for kids to be creative, build connections as a team and with others, and help guide a path for their future if they aren’t quite sure what they want to do. Not only by introducing them to engineering, but also talking with others and learning about other things they may be interested in,” Solloway said. Solloway hopes to pursue nursing post graduation, but she hopes to continue with robotics as a hobby or a side project.

Smith and Solloway will compete in the VEX World Championships April 21-24 in St. Louis. Fundraising is currently in progress to raise money to support the trip. SUNY Morrisville’s STEP Program has actively helped the program. A bottle drive and other fundraising activities are being scheduled as well. Anyone wishing to help support Sherburne robotics can email ryanj@seonline.org.