LANCASTER — Joe Walker Middle School STEALTH Academy Vex Jets Team 4073G earned a trip to Dallas this May for the 2025 VEX Robotics World Championship.
The team won a bid to the world championship last weekend by winning the Design Award at the 2025 California Region 3 VEX Robotics Championship in Bakersfield.
The Design Award recognizes a team’s ability to document and explain their engineering design process via an Engineering Notebook and team Interview.
“The Design Award is an award you actually get for having a really awesome notebook,” team captain Karina Willis said. “And so that really means that our team was really good at documenting down everything that we did in the classroom, everything we did at the competitions. We were really good at showing our ideas in the notebook, so it’s kind of just documentation. It’s called an Engineering Notebook.”
Karina wasn’t exaggerating. Team 4073G’s meticulously documented engineering notebook features colorful illustrations with fine hand printing by team members, interactive elements and a pop-up illustration of their robot design. The team — Karina, and eighth graders Oliver Kei and Aarav Patel and seventh graders Kara Paniagua, Caleb Chery, Natalie Nicoll, Brett Meyer and John Belcher — won the Design Award at a league competition, which won them a bid to the state championship. They won another Design Award at the Stars and Stripes VEX Robotics Competition, which won the team a second bid to the state championship, which they did not need.
“And then at states we ended up the Design Award again,” Karina said, “so now we’re three times, three-streak winner. So every tournament that we’ve gone to we’ve gotten the Design Award.”
According to the REC (Robotics Education & Competition) Foundation, which offers a variety of VEX competitions to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the Design Award recognizes an organized and professional approach to the engineering design process, project and time management, and team organization.
“Student demonstration of the Engineering Design Process is fundamental to the educational value of REC Foundation programs,” the award description said. “The Design Award recognizes a team’s ability to document and explain their Engineering Design Process via an Engineering Notebook and Team Interview.”
Karina does most of the documenting in the notebook though all team members contribute. Team members are hoping for a clean sweep on the Design Award.
“We’ve never won it at worlds yet so they’re fishing to win the Design Award at worlds,” teacher and adviser Matt Anderson said. “I think it’s one of the best I’ve seen.”
“We recently updated the notebook this weekend so we’re getting ready to turn it in,” Karina said.
This year’s game is called High Stakes. Teams work in an alliance with a red team and blue team.
“The game objective is trying to get these rings onto the mobile poles,” Oliver said, as he placed a red ring on a yellow mobile goal stake.
Teams earn points scoring rings on stakes, placing mobile goals and climbing at the end of the match. At the end of a match, teams can earn the most points by having their robot climb the four-foot tall ladder and place a ring on the top stake.
“So far no one’s been able to get on it as far as we know,” Brett said. “That thing is actually the tallest VEX element yet, which is like four feet. I think at worlds we’re going to see some good robots that are going to launch it up there. It’s going to be amazing.”
The competition includes an autonomous skills portion, where the robot is programmed to place rings on the stakes by itself. The programmers on the team are Brett, Natalie and John.
“So programming our robot was a challenge as our autonomous originally just went forward and grabbed the goal and scored one ring,” Brett said, “But we’ve made it so it can go to the ladder and then can score two rings, so it can get more than one autonomous task done.”
Team member Kara works with Autodesk Inventor and 3D scanning.
“I’m helping build the hanger,” she said.
Oliver said he is the primary 3D printer and inventor. He added he is thankful for Kara’s work.
“Kara helps me a lot so she’s really helpful for making parts, “ he said. “In fact she’s going to help me make the parts.”
Joe Walker will take all eight members of Team 4073G to Dallas for the world championship. The school needs to raise about $10,000 to cover airfare, hotels and meals. West Antelope Valley Education Foundation covered the $1,800 registration fee.
Caleb is in his second year with the Vex Jets. He will go to world championship for the fist time this year.
“What I enjoy about the team is the team work and how everybody works together,” he said.
Joe Walker sent two teams to the world championship last year. Team 4073G just missed the cut.
“I think it’s really exciting that we get to go because this is going to be my first year,” Karina said. “Last year I was so excited about and we didn’t there …I’m really glad; it will really be an experience to go to worlds my eighth grade year.”
Anyone who would like to help the Vex Jets get to Dallas can email Anderson at m.andeson@westside.k12.ca.us or call/text him at 661-317-1959.
