09-03-2025
East Grand Forks robotics heading to world competition with five invites from state
Mar. 9—EAST GRAND FORKS — Following a good showing at the Minnesota State VEX Robotics Competition, the East Grand Forks team is preparing to head to the VEX World Championship this spring.
"We had a very good year, all year, and it has been very exciting to see the team the whole time," Coach Nathan Blair said. "I knew they were going to do well (at the competition). ... It's been a pretty big year for them."
The Minnesota State VEX Robotics Competition was held Feb. 27 through March 1 in St. Cloud, and is the state's largest competition for K-12 robotics. The East Grand Forks Robotics program came home with five invites across its three teams to the Worlds Competition. The teams also earned four awards recognizing their design, coding and team skills. Sixty high school-level teams and 54 middle school-level teams competed.
This was the fourth year qualifying for the state competition for the East Grand Forks senior team SynthWave. The team made it to the quarterfinal round of the head-to-head competition and won the skills tournament with the highest score of any team throughout the season, breaking its own season record, qualifying them for Worlds. The team also won the Think Award, which recognizes the most effective use of coding techniques and design for game challenges, also qualifying them for Worlds. The team made up of Nolan Blair, Luke Massmann and Sebastian Olson got two invites to Worlds.
East Grand Forks had two teams competing in the Metal Robot middle school division. The Constructors made it to finals in the head-to-head tournament and won the skills tournament, qualifying for Worlds from both. The Constructors team is made up of Braiden Anhorn, Asher Blair, Andrew Cassanelli and Aiden Kazmierczak. The Robo Turtles made it to the quarterfinals in the head-to-head tournament, and also won the Design Award, recognizing their team's approach to engineering its robot, qualifying them for Worlds. The Robo Turtles team is made up of Zoe Baez, Eli Bowman, Kylen Driscoll and Zaiden Olson.
Nathan Blair also won the Mentor of the Year award and Jessica Johnson won Volunteer of the Year for the time she has put into helping the team compete.
The team is currently fundraising to help fund its trip to the world competition in early May. Around 800 high school teams and 500 middle school teams from across the world will be competing in the VEX V5RC Worlds Competition in Dallas. More information on the fundraising can be found on the East Grand Forks Robotics Facebook page.
