The Fountain Hills High School robotics team recently took part in the Vex World Robotics competition hosted out of the Anaheim Convention Center, going on to win the Create Award for creative engineering.

Over 750 teams representing more than 60 countries met in Anaheim this year for the Vex World competition, with the FHHS Third Wave squad being one of only four hailing from Arizona.

This year, Third Wave competitors included Dylan Northern, Olivia Lagnese, Cameron Ferma and Andrew Cooper.

“This year’s team formed a unique robot consisting of a base battle bot that throws out blocking walls, a point scoring robot that competed successfully all year and a demon bot that causes problems with the opposing robots,” explained club advisor and FHHS educator Dr. Paul McElligott.

“Although they did not get into the finals, the robot this year received a Create Award from the World competition.”

The Create Award is earned by the team whose robot design incorporates a creative engineering solution to the design challenges presented by the year’s unique game.

Judges look for teams with a highly creative engineering process and scores teams on the following criteria: A robot that is well crafted and unique in design structure, a team that has demonstrated a highly creative engineering design process and methodology, a team that has a committed and ambitious approach to the game and a team that demonstrates good cooperation and interview quality.

“We are very proud of this team of mostly seniors who were awarded for such a creative solution to a difficult robotic problem on a world scale,” McElligott said.