Queen Creek Robotics Foundation team, GearedUp, has won the Arizona VEX Robotics Competition High School State Championship.

The Arizona VRC High School State Championship tournament was a two-day tournament with 51 of the top teams in the state competing.

GearedUp went 10-0 in their qualification matches and continued their winning streak in the elimination matches, as they made it all the way to the final round. In the best of three finals, GearedUp and their alliance defeated the opposition in two matches to win the coveted Tournament Champions award.

GearedUp also was awarded the Excellence Award, the top award given at any VEX Robotics Tournament. To be eligible for the Excellence Award, the team had to submit an engineering notebook documenting team strategy and build, be at or near the top of notebook rankings, have a high-quality team interview, be ranked in the top 10 teams at the end of Qualifying matches, and be ranked in the top 10 teams for skills.

Winning these two prestigious awards has qualified GearedUp to compete at the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas this month.

The state competition took place March 10-11 at Desert Ridge High School. GearedUp is composed of three local high school students: Abrianna Stone, a freshman at Crismon High School was the team manager and scout at competitions; Jarett Poirier, a sophomore at Queen Creek High School, was the team coder and driver; and Sawyer Ganes, a senior at ASU Prep Poly STEM High School, wrote the engineering notebook and built the robot.

GearedUp is part of the Queen Creek Robotics Foundation, which is a community-based, award-winning, nonprofit 501c3 focused on providing students’ opportunities in competitive robotics. Participating in the VEX Robotics program teaches students a great deal about teamwork and problem-solving. The team gets hands-on engineering experience while coding and building their robot. The competitive environment is aimed at instilling life skills such as perseverance, communication, collaboration, project management and critical thinking.

If you have a local high school student that would be interested in learning more about joining the award-winning VEX Robotics program, contact john@qcrf.org.
The Queen Creek Robotics Foundation welcomes donations to help offset the registration fees and travel costs associated with attending the VEX Robotics World Championships in Dallas.

Donations can be made at qcrf.square.site. Local businesses interested in sponsorships can contact sponsorships@qcrf.org.