At left: Christopher Glenn of Lincroft and Ben Iglesia of West Allenhurst joined their Ranney Upper School Robotics Team A teammate Chip Johnson of Red Bank (not pictured) in sharing the state VEX Robotics Championship with their Team M colleagues (pictured at right) Jiawen Yu, Kangqing Hall, and Rylan Foy. Program advisor Chiara Shah is at center.
Press release from Ranney School
Two Red Bank area teens were among the big winners, as Ranney School Robotics students programmed, engineered, and drove their way to a two-team winning alliance at this past weekend’s New Jersey State VEX Robotics Starstruck Championship.
Competing against approximately 20 other schools and groups across the state, including High Tech High, Ranney’s Team A and Team M shared the championship for the first time at the competition held March 4 in Cherry Hill. on March 4, 2017, in Cherry Hill. Ranney’s teams also won an Innovate Award (Team A) for their use of transmission to switch power, and a Second Place Award in Skills (Team M) for driving and programming.
Team A includes junior Christopher Glenn of Lincroft, junior Chip Johnson of Red Bank, and senior Ben Iglesia of West Allenhurst. Team M includes junior Rylan Foy of Spring Lake, as well as international students Jiawen (Kevin) Yu, a sophomore, and Kangqing (Connie) Hall, a junior. The students were accompanied to the event by program advisor Chiara Shah, and by Computer Science teacher Simon Gilbert.
Both teams and their robots will now compete at the VEX World Competition, taking place in Louisville, Kentucky in mid-April. This will be the fifth consecutive year in which Ranney Robotics has attended the world championship, and the second time in which the school has had two teams qualify for the global event.
Established in 2010, Ranney’s Robotics Program has earned 32 trophies this season. Students have the opportunity to take Robotics as an elective beginning in the fourth grade.
