Half Metal Jackets Robotics team to compete in State Championship

(ROCKWALL, TX — February 16, 2018) The Half Metal Jackets, a team 1296A middle school VEX EDR robotics team, will compete in the State Championship at the end of February and will travel to the US Open, a national competition, in April.

The team started the season by watching the 2018 game reveal – “In The Zone”. The game objective is to maneuver mobile goals and cones in order to score points. HMJ took several weeks to build the best robot they could. By working together as a team they accomplished all their goals in building their robot – “The Batmobile”. The Batmobile is able to both pick up cones and mobile goals as well as score in the 20 point zone, rare for this age group.

After their robot was ready to go, HMJ traveled to their first competition in Terrell where they won the “Design Award” at a high school level. The Design Award recognizes the team as being professional in their design approach. HMJ traveled to two more high school competitions – Buckner and Killeen. Winning the Amaze Award and the Judges Award! The Amaze Award is awarded to the team with an amazing and well-rounded team with a top performing robot. While the Judges Award is awarded from the judges for special accomplishments of the team.

Finally, the Half Metal Jackets traveled to their first middle school competition at Rockwall Heath High School, where they won the Excellence Award and place second in the overall competition. The Excellence Award is the highest award that can be received in VEX that goes to the all-around top team and qualified HMJ for the State Championship competition in Greenville and also the US Open in Iowa. The team then traveled to a competition in Sachse. There the team won 1st place in robot competition and the Excellence Award! Finally, the team competed at Flower Mound and won the Excellence Award and the Skills Award for the first time in team’s history.

If you would like to help support the team, donations can be mailed to Rockwall Robotics 2010 Industrial Blvd #602, Rockwall, TX 75087 or visit our website at http://www.rockwallrobotics.com/donate/.

Submitted press release.

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