Phil Davidson (Mentor and Patron of Resolution Robotics) writes about how the Resolution Robotics team performed at the Vex Robotics World Championships.

The trip to the world championships was exhausting, nerve-wracking, as well as amazing. Out of the 11,400 registered high school teams from 40 countries, the top 600 gathered to compete for the title of World Champion.

Our team had great success at the competition, winning 8 out of their 11 qualification matches. They had some great wins which on paper we should have lost, all down to great strategy, match planning, and execution, this included one match where our alliance partner, the Finnish National Champions, toppled at the beginning of the match rendering them useless for the rest of the match. Our team rose to the occasion winning by 1 point even though they were in an almost disastrous 1 versus 2 scenario. When the buzzer went our alliance partner turned to us and in complete awe said "you guys are monsters".

The only piece of bad luck we had was in our final qualification match when our alliance partner drove into us accidentally at the start of the match damaging our robot leading to a loss that we should have won. This unexpected loss dropped us from #3 seed position to #10 which meant that we didn't get the alliance pick we had hoped for going into the final knock-out stage.

Moving onto the elimination phase we won our Round of 16 and quarter-finals matches easily by a good margin, sadly though our journey came to an end in the semi-finals when we were beaten by the eventual division champions.

Our team had many hurdles to overcome during the year, we are a small self-funded team with limited resources and yet we were able to represent New Zealand on the world stage showing that we are among the best the world has to offer, often outperforming teams coming from schools with a very mature, and well-funded robotics program. Over the last 11 months, I kept reminding the team that "talent + hard work + thirst for success = great things" and without a doubt they proved this to be true.

The team has a lot to be proud of and this result now ranks them as one of the top 48 teams in the world. At the end of the tournament, we were approached by the Director of Robotics from Hawaii and we were invited to compete in an exclusive world signature event in July which was another great recognition of our team's place in the world.

Please CLICK HERE to link to the article written about this team, as well as other KingsWay students who participated in this international event. We are very proud of these students.