Milpitas High School Robotics Team wins State Championship

In early March, four Milpitas High School (MHS) students from the Milpitas Xtreme Robotics Team 1669X went out to Redding, California, to compete in the 2022 Northern California VRC High School State Championship. 

What transpired there exceeded their wildest expectations. They won the State championship across three categories: Excellence Award, Tournament Champion, and Robot Skills Champion.  

“This achievement is a culmination of the past 4 years we’ve spent in robotics,” said Eugene Ng, a senior who is part of the team. “I’m happy. And I feel accomplished to have been able to achieve this.” 

Eugene, along with seniors Chenghao Li, Kathan Sheth, and Eusern Ng, prepared extensively to secure this accomplishment.  

“We took our experiences from past competitions, and practiced as much as we could,” said Kathan, who discovered his love for programming in the seventh grade. 

Back when they first joined MHS’ club, there wasn’t anyone who could teach them the world of VEX robotics.  

“We had to learn all of these new concepts on our own, from scratch,” said Eugene. 

After a lot of trial and error, things started to come together. Now they are able to teach VEX robotics to younger students, who can learn it within six months; they don’t have to go through all of the time that their predecessors did. 

Currently the Robotics Club at MHS has about a couple dozen active members. Within that club, there are multiple competitive teams that work together on various projects. Many members are freshmen and sophomores, and aren’t officially part of a team yet. These students must first train so that they can understand the fundamentals. 

Eugene, Eusern, Chenghao, and Kathan have also had victories at regional tournaments, which were what qualified them for the state championship. 

With their latest win, they will officially advance to the VEX Robotics World Championship, which will take place in Dallas, Texas this May.

“Robotics is fun, and I definitely want to keep doing it in the future,” said Chenghao. 

All four students expressed gratitude to their parents for their valuable guidance and support over the last four years.