Noblesville West Middle School robotics team completes dream season • Current Publishing

From left, Will Davidson, Kelsea Law and Auggie Vendt with their robot and build award. (Photo by Jessica Todd)

A team from the Noblesville West Middle School robotics club, the Fever Dreamers, recently competed in the World Championship for Vex Robotics in Dallas. In the school’s history, this year’s team is the second to qualify for Worlds.

The team, whose members are eighth-graders Will Davidson, Kelsea Law, Auggie Vendt, Aderyn Madsen and Genevieve Claffey, placed 76th out of 84 teams in the Opportunity Division.

The team also received the Build Award, which, according to the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation, “recognizes a well-constructed robot that is made with a high degree of attention to detail to hold up the rigors of competition.”

Vendt said the best part of the experience was meeting other students from different countries.

“We got to meet people from all over the world,” Vendt said. “There were students from Turkey, Russia, China and the United Kingdom.”

The season began in September 2023, and team members met every Tuesday and Thursday after school, and on some weekends, to build their robot. Their challenge for the season was building a robot to pick up cubes on a playing field and put them into hollow towers.

“We started driving our final design around in February, but throughout the entire season, we’ve changed a lot of things,” Law said. We finished this design right before Worlds. We were constantly doing tiny design changes to make it a little bit better and more consistent.”

In February, the team started its season in Gas City, placing third among 53 teams.

At its next competition at Clay Middle School, the Fever Dreamers placed ninth out of 69 teams and won the Excellence Award — the highest award presented in the VEX Robotics competition, given to a team that exemplifies overall excellence in building a high-quality robotics program.

Winning the Excellence Award gave the team a ticket to the state competition in March, where it placed 51st out of 115 teams and won the Create Award, presented to the team whose robot incorporates the most creative engineering solution to the challenges of the state game.

Next year, the Fever Dreamers will move up to high school competition.

“Because of the limited number of students in the high school’s program, we might have to add a few people to our team, but I am confident we will be able to stay together because we work well together,” Davidson said.

For more about the robotics club and other clubs offered at Noblesville Schools, visit noblesvilleschools.org.