Milpitas Xtreme Robotics (MXR) rookie team participated in the 2025 California Region 2 VEX V5 High School Championship at the Indian Community Center in Milpitas on March 8-9, according to robotevents.com.
The rookie team won first place in a rookie competition in order to qualify for the state championship, MXR club president Eusern Ng said.
“Our main goal was to qualify for the world championship, which is the next level after states,” Ng said.
Although the rookie team did not qualify for the world championship, MXR is very happy and proud of them for qualifying for the state championship as a rookie team, treasurer Oliver Ma said. It was the rookie team’s first year of robotics competitions, so they didn’t have much experience, he said.
“In the state championship, you have the best of the best in the Bay Area competing against each other,” Ma said. “We just wanted the rookie team to get more experience with being in a competitive environment against these really capable teams.”
The VEX competition is played by two alliances of two teams each on a 12’ by 12’ field with 48 rings and 9 stakes of varying height, according to vexrobotics.com. The goal of the game is to score points by putting the rings onto these stakes and to score higher than the opponent alliance, the article said.
The MXR rookie team built a robot that could perform every function of the game and had been working on it since August, Ng said.
“The team designed the robot and redesigned it multiple times to fix the flaws,” Ng said. “The latest robot was able to do all aspects of the game, so it was able to intake the rings, clamp onto a goal, and put the rings onto a higher stake.”
The most important skill students learn in MXR is teamwork, MXR advisor and Computer Aided Design (CAD) teacher Paul Okoye said. They also learn about strategy and how to plan things out, he said.
“There is a different set of goals every year,” Okoye said. “For that year, you’re supposed to make your robot carry out specific tasks. That’s why it’s a competition.”