Windsor Charter Academy team wins state championship in VEX Robotics competition

Kelly Lyell, Fort Collins Coloradoan
·2 min read

A team of students at Windsor Charter Academy’s high school won the VEX Robotics state championship tournament Saturday and, along with a team from Colorado Early Colleges Fort Collins, qualified for the organization’s world championships next month in Dallas.

Windsor Charter Academy’s “Fractal” team took the title along with alliance partner Stargate Academy of Thornton, defeating Colorado Early Colleges Fort Collins’ FrostByte team and its alliance partner, Peak Robotics of Boulder, in the title match of the 32-team state championships at Kent Denver School in Englewood.

VEX Robotics is a competitive program for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, offering a student-centered, hands-on learning experience that combines engineering and computer programming. This year’s competition required teams to build and program a robot to place oddly shaped balls into a goal by launching, pushing or maneuvering them around obstacles from one side of a 12-foot-by-12-foot arena while simultaneously defending their own goal, Windsor Charter Academy innovation teacher Casey Hicks explained in an email. A portion of the competition operates autonomously, with the robot pre-programmed to score goals without human intervention, while the remainder is controlled remotely by a student driver.

Members of Windsor Charter Academy’s championship team are Kendall Albertsen, Matthew Beckage, Alexander Loftin, Ethan Majchrowski and Jonathan Southam. Members of the CEC Fort Collins team were Alex Faltermier, Elias Briggs, Hosea Masih and Tripton Hazlett. Both teams will travel to Dallas for the world championships April 25-30, along with a middle school team from Windsor Charter Academy that learned Monday it had qualified, Hicks said.

Maximum Output, a home team from Timnath Hicks said is headed up by a Windsor Charter Academy student, won the Judges Award at the state championship. Judges Award winners do not advance to the world championships, according to the competition website.

Windsor Charter Academy is a charter school in the Weld RE-4 School District. CEC Fort Collins is also a charter school, authorized through the statewide Charter School Institute rather than a specific school district.

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Windsor Charter Academy team wins Colorado state title in VEX Robotics