Mesa all-girls robotics team from ASU Prep earns world honors

By Connor Van Ligten
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Alexis Ngo and Tara Yuenyongsgool, eighth-graders at the ASU Prep Poly SPARK Institute in Mesa, share a common passion — robotics.

The pair competed together at the 2025 CREATE Jr US Open World Championship in Council Bluffs, Iowa, from April 3-5. Using their robot “Johnny 20,” which was built in just a week, Ngo and Yuenyongsgool brought home the prestigious Honor Award and also finished second place in the event’s skills competition. Along the way, they were supported by ASU Prep teacher and coach Matthew Chicci.

All three of them took different paths to getting into robotics. For Ngo, it was when she first went into middle school.

“When I first entered middle school, I was looking at different clubs,” Ngo said. “Since I want to be a biomedical engineer, my dad thought I should go into a robotics club so I could get experience with buildings.”

For Yuenyongsgool, it was from a flyer.

“It was a flyer for robotics on the wall and my friend Maggie came with me to the first meeting when I wanted to try it out,” Yuenyongsgool said.

For Chicci, it goes back multiple decades.

“When I first started teaching, when I applied at Queen Creek High School, the only way the principal there would give me a job was if I took on the robotics program there. Being new to education back in 2002, I said ‘sure, I need a job,’ so I agreed to do it,” Chicci said. “That right there partnered me with General Motors for the robotics team and I fell in love with it.”

When Chicci came to ASU Prep, he took over the school’s robotics program and reworked it to be more student-centric.

“Their mentors and teachers had left. When I got hired, I offered to take it over and shift it into something that was more manageable and student-centered,” Chicci said. “So they could do a lot more of the work on their own.”

The three will often meet on Fridays, which are half-days for ASU Prep, to get robotics work done. Their workflow typically involves three processes — designing, testing and competing. Usually, the three are given rules for the type of game their robots will play ahead of an upcoming competition, giving them time to plan, prepare and test a robot before it competes.

“Different games get released each year for competition. So we read through the manual and make sure we know how everything works before we build our robot to make sure we know what the best way to get more points is,” Ngo said. “Then we would start brainstorming robot designs and what we would want to add to it...For testing, we test each aspect to see if it works efficiently, and if it doesn’t, we try to improve it or replace with something else. We keep doing that until we reach the competition.”

For Yuenyongsgool, the work required to build and operate these robots is all worth it when she sees the robot excel in competition.

“We have a lot of fun,” Yuenyongsgool said. “It is really rewarding during competitions to see how well we’ve done. We just try our best.”

For Chicci, he tends to take a hands-off approach to supporting the two students. He’ll help them with any necessities, but puts the competition in their hands.

“I’m the gofer. I go get them whatever they need, but I tell them that making it to their matches on time is their responsibility,” Chicci said. “Having conversations with their partners and talking strategy is on their shoulders. I tell them I’ll go fetch them some batteries if they need some. I carry a couple fresh ones on me in case they toss me a used one. I do stuff like that so they can focus on everything else... what we try to do is make sure they can run the whole thing on their own.”

Ngo and Yuenyongsgool are both able to use their education in their robotics competition as well. With both being STEM students, what they learn in class often carries over to robotics.

“We both take a STEM class and our teacher is another one of our robotics coaches,” Ngo said. “She’s taught us stuff such as elastic potential energy which has helped our robot several times. It really helps learning that stuff and having it stuck in my brain to use for robotics later.”

Yuenyongsgool agreed.

“I’ve learned coding from a young age. I can do a lot a coding stuff for robotics because I already knew how to, and I didn’t have to relearn any of it. That really helps.” Yuenyongsgool said.

Both girls are heading into high school after this school year is over. They both plan to continue competing in robotics at a high school level, but they also have started to think about how they can use what they’ve learned from robotics in potential future careers.

“Even before I went into robotics, I’ve always wanted to become an engineer of some sort because my dad is currently an aerospace engineer and I found that really interesting. Right now, I currently want to be a biomedical engineer so I can help people,” Ngo said. “I want to create stuff like artificial hearts or limbs to help people because those are typically rare and really expensive for those who need it.”

Yuenyongsgool wants to go into STEM too.

“I’m not really sure what I want to be exactly, but I’ve always been interested in STEM careers,” Yuenyongsgool said. “I’m probably gonna go into something STEM-related and robotics will always help me with that,” Yuenyongsgool said.

All in all, for any young student in robotics but is afraid or nervous about trying it out, Chicci had some words of advice: “If you never try anything, you won’t be able to learn and grow. Even if you fail, you’ve learned something, maybe you learned that this isn’t for you, but at least you gave it a chance.”

ASU Prep Poly STEM is located at 7330 E. Innovation Way N. in Mesa.