Vex IQ is a robotics program. We are 5th graders and are on the same team called “Hydralion.” Here we will tell you the steps of the  tournament.

First, you go through inspections. Inspections is when you go to a table and they look at your robot. After they look at it they put your robot in a box to see if it is not too big. Next, you go to your pit area to either strategize, practice, and hangout. Next, we go to queue to really strategize with the team you are competing with. Quick note: you are not working against the other team. You are trying to get as many points as possible with the other team.  

After Queuing you go onto the field. You wait a bit for the team next to you to finish.  After that off you go stacking hubs in building areas to give you points. How you get points is by getting orange hubs in the scoring area. Each hub is worth one point if you get it in the scoring area. You can also stack hubs, those are worth two points. There are also yellow hubs on top of the hanging bar. If you knock a yellow hub down it is worth one point, but if you put it in the scoring area it is worth two points.  You can park under the hanging structure to score points. This way is worth one point. The last way is doing a high hang or a low hang. A low hang is where you can slide a piece of paper under the robot. The high hang is where you can slide a hub under the robot. When you finish after one minute it’s back to the pit to prepare for the next round.

There are five rounds you play in.  After that the judges add up your average, for instance ours was 6.50.

Now after all that there are finals. The finals are when you take the two best teams and the two worst teams and put those two together and then you do that again to the next best and worst teams and so on. Our team came in third in the whole tournament. It was a very fun experience, and we encourage that others should do it too.