WARSAW — Warsaw Community School Corporation recently hosted the sixth annual Warsaw Robotics Vex Exhibition Tournament on Friday, May 11, in the Warsaw Area Career Center gym.

The tournament featured 26 teams from Edgewood and Lakeview middle schools, Washington STEM Academy, Warsaw Area Career Center and Urey Middle School from John Glenn School Corporation.

Students were given six weeks to build their Vex robots for the tournament. This year’s theme was “Splitting the Defense.” Teams competed at least six times in qualifying rounds before being ranked. Following the ranking, the top eight teams chose two alliances for the finals round. Each team involved in the tournament had approximately two to five students.

Warsaw Area Career Center’s Zercher Team allied with Edgewood Middle School’s Robohobo team to take first place and be named tournament champions. The allied team included Keller Bailey, Thomas Boggs and Owen Stevens from Edgewood’s Robohobo and Damion Villa from WACC Zercher Team.

Urey Middle School’s teams number one and two formed an alliance and won the tournament runner-up position. The middle school also earned the community service award for donating the most amount of food to Kosciusko Combined Community Services. Urey’s allied team included Keegan Donlon, Waylon Auer, Conner Szuba, Andrew Scott, Connor Good and Bryce Dittmar.

The Percussionists Team, comprised of Ian Kincaid, Preston Kohler, Sydney Langhorn and Josh Cronin of Edgewood Middle School, earned the Design Award for producing the best engineering/design notebook.

Coaches include Abbi Richcreek, EMS; Justin Weaver, LMS; Paul Zakaria, WACC; David Burden and Patrick Hazelton, Washington STEM Academy; Dara Goodlink, UMS. Eric Taylor, Jon Scroggs and Daniel Eberhardt officiated the event.

Each team involved in the tournament showcased knowledge and skills in robotics through the design and building of their own robot based on challenge constraints.