Out of 26 total teams, the final two teams to compete for a spot at the VEX Robotics World Championship were from the same robotics club.
Maryville’s A Team is known as “( ಠ ͜ʖಠ),” while the B Team is “[Team Name Here]”, and competed against each other during the final round at the VEX V5 Robotics Competition High School State Championship. The competition was the qualifier for world championships, and was held south of St. Louis at Mineral Area College.
In the end, the A Team rose victorious. It will advance to the VEX Robotics World Championship in Dallas May 6, and the B Team will attend the trip alongside.
Philip Stone, the robotics club’s faculty adviser, said this was his first year with two competitive teams in the state competition.
“It comes down to the final match, it’s my two teams against each other,” Stone said. “And you know, just the reaction of either winning or losing is a testament to how dedicated they are, whether or not it was absolute.”
The A Team consists of seniors Raymond Zhao and John Little, and junior TJ Kain. The VEX Robotics World Championship will include 800 teams from around the world, including Germany, China and Ireland.
In 2022, Maryville High School’s robotics team qualified for the world championship, but it did not place outside its bracket. Stone said the teams this year have improved significantly and have more confidence compared to 2022.
Zhao, a recipient of the 2025 Missouri Scholars 100 program, is the A Team’s coder. He said compared to the competition in 2022, he feels more assured his team will place higher and perhaps even win.
“I’m hoping that we can be at least an average team, hopefully above average,” Zhao said. “I went three years ago and we were totally unprepared at that time, we had no idea what it was like. Hopefully, we can go out there and do pretty well. I think there’s a lot to learn from the best teams in the world that are going to be there.”
Sophomore Shuv Goswami is the coder for the B Team. He said he is excited Zhao’s team won and will compete at the world championship. He said Zhao’s code is smooth and has great quality.
“He’s pretty smart, I can say that,” Goswami said. “All of his code, it’s really good. His build quality is great.”
Goswami said he was nervous and stressed when competing against his friends in the finals but has high hopes the A Team will have a chance in the upcoming competition with what they are creating.
Stone said he never stressed about getting students engaged with robotics, oftentimes needing to kick them out of the classroom because they are so focused on their work. He said the team could easily work on robotics until midnight.
He said he loves how dedicated his students are with robotics and STEM-related fields, and that he is proud of them. With the current skills of the A Team, he said he has no fear about whether they will place higher in comparison to 2022.
“I love how motivated they are to be part of that,” Stone said. “These kids are going to go on to either engineering programs in college or computer science, things like that…I think they get more out of being on a robotics team than maybe sometimes they get in a classroom.”
