The Vaughn College Robotics team (VCAT) kicked off the new year by hosting the Vex V5 robotics competition in early January. More than 45 teams from Queens and New York state were in attendance. The VEX V5 Robotics Competition, presented by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, is the largest and fastest growing middle school and high school robotics program globally with more than 20,000 teams from 50 countries playing in more than 1,700 competitions worldwide.

These competitions provide high school and middle school students with the opportunity to showcase their STEM skills through the process of designing and building robots for competitions. Teams competed for eight awards, four of which would qualify them for the regional championship, by attaining a higher score than the opposing team by scoring rings on stakes, placing mobile goals and by climbing at the end of the match.

Coast 2 Coast robotics from Bayside, New York was crowned as the tournament champions. While KG Computech from Flushing, New York took home the excellence award, which is the most valuable award a team can win at a Vex competition, and also won the design award and robot skills champion award. The design award is awarded to the team with the most effective and efficient design process, while the robot skills champion award is presented to the team with the highest combined programming and driving scores. Both teams were automatically qualified for the regional championship in March at the Cradle of Aviation Museum.

The event received widespread media coverage as FOX5, PIX11, CBS and the Queens Post travelled to the College to cover the competitions and interview William Zeng ’27, president of VCAT, Adam Marzak ’26, treasurer of VCAT and several high students competing in the matches.

To see a full list of the awards, click here.