History of the STA Robotics Program
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STA Tigers Robotics first began in 2013 when Mayor Greg Ballard initiated a robotics scholarship program to encourage schools in Indianapolis to form a team. Each school that applied received one robotics starter kit and committed to playing at the City Tournament that was held at “Conseco FieldHouse”. One team of 5 boys formed a team with our Math teacher as coach. They built the robot in September and October and went to the City Tournament in November and the season was over. In 2014 we grew to two teams, one elementary team of 3 boys and one middle school team of 4 boys. We added more tournaments to our schedule and at the city tournament at Conseco Fieldhouse our elementary team won the top trophy for the Excellence Award. Mayor Ballard visited our school to present the trophy to the team at a school convocation. Over the following years we have earned a variety of trophies and sent teams to the State competition at Lucas Oil Stadium and to the Worlds competition in Louisville, Kentucky and Dallas,Texas. Due to the State Robotics Initiative, Indiana can now boast an impressive 952 elementary, 491 middle school, and 237 high school VEX teams! Indiana is now a national leader with the most VEX IQ teams in the country!
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The 2023-24 season will be our 10th year having a VEX robotics team at STA. We have students from grades 5-8 forming elementary and middle school teams, along with our three coaches, Mrs. Hoy, Mrs. Bungard, and Mr. Miller, and our longtime robotics mentor Ollie Trapp.