LAYTON—A group of students in an after school program at North Davis Junior High have put in hundreds of hours since last October building and coding robots and their efforts are paying off. The kids are going to the World Championship next week in Dallas, Texas. 

“The kids are extremely excited to represent NDJH,” said coach and teacher Christina Brimhall. “They can’t wait to represent their peers.”

Ninth graders Ashlyn Peterson, Nathan Toomey, Heber Reed and Levi Christiansen make up the four-man team. “They build and code the robots and play the same game all year,” said Brimhall. “It’s called Full Volume. The team strategizes ways the robot can play the best. They don’t work against each other, they try to score as much as possible.”

The team has played in six games this year, she said. “They received the excellence award five times which is the highest and have been teamwork champions four times. If you win one of these awards you qualify for state.”

At state, teams compete against 40 other teams, said Brimhall. “If they win at the state level they play in weekly competitions to qualify for the world championship.”

Davis School District has one of the biggest VEX competitions in the state, she said. “Every Saturday they host competitions all winter long to gain as many skills or awards as they can. It really improves their teamwork and collaboration skills.”

There are two events, drivers or autonomous, said Brimhall. “Drivers work with a partner to complete the challenge or autonomous where they have to code it all and it runs off of all that coding. There’s no driving the robot.”

The kids also have to put together an engineering notebook, she said. “They keep track of the problems, data, coding and steps to build a robot.”

Students put in a lot of work, Brimhall said. “We meet two days a week for an hour and a half and most of them spend more time on Wednesdays because we have a late start. They also spend time working at home.”

It takes funding to make it to the world championships, said Brimhall. “The district requests that we raise $2,000 a kid. We held penny wars at school, a Zupas fundraiser and a yard sale. We raised $4,600 on our own then someone gave us a large donation of $5,400 that propelled us to our goal of $10,000. In total we raised close to $14,000.”

Brimhall said as a coach she’s not allowed to work on the robots. “I’m there to guide them and to facilitate. I’ve learned so much from the students. I’ve had to do some training. Coding takes years to learn. There’s always room for improvement.”

The competition is April 30 – May 3, she said. “May 1 is qualifying then May 2 is a full day of competition and May 3 is a wrap up and closing ceremonies and they’ll announce the champions then.”

Brimhall said they’re all super excited. “We’re extremely grateful for the opportunity and all those who have helped and cheered for us along the way. This is huge for NDJH.”