Sullivan East Middle sends robotics club to world tournament

Murry Lee
·2 min read

SULLIVAN COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) – Sullivan East Middle School celebrated its robotics club’s accomplishments Thursday.

The school held a pep rally to send off the robotics competitors to a national tournament, the VEX Robotics World Championship.

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The tournament lasts three days and begins Sunday in Dallas, Texas. For some of the team, this will be their third year competing in the tournament.

“For me, it’s fulfilling because I see these kids move on to high school [and] continue to do the same thing,” said Margaret Trent, Sullivan East Middle STEM teacher and robotics coach. “We even have students [who are] going to college now to be engineers coming back and helping to participate as volunteers in our program. So I’m elated. I’m just exceptionally excited about what they’re going to do.”

According to Trent, Sullivan East will compete against 490 other teams from around the world.

“Every year, they release a new game, actually at Vex World for the new season, and they come back and immediately start planning a robot that is built to compete in that game where they’ll go in head-to-head matches, two robots against each other, and they’re paired up at random,” Trent said of the competition. “They don’t even know who their partners are going to be and what they’re capable of doing.”

One of the team members, eighth-grader Harlan Carrier, told News Channel 11 that Sullivan East has a history of winning after capturing the Excellence Award at the Tennessee State Championship.

“I’m really proud of our program for being able to go to worlds almost every year that this program’s actually existed, as well as this is my second year,” Carrier said. “I went to worlds twice, so that’s a cool experience. I’m excited to collaborate with all the different nations and kind of get together to compete in the worlds level.”

Eighth-grader Evan Phillips will represent more than just his Sullivan East team in Dallas. He will represent the entire Southeastern United States during the tournament’s Parade of Nations while dressed in overalls and a straw hat to pay homage to East Tennessee’s agricultural history.

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