For the second year in a row, Clear Lake Lion Robotics team members are headed to the 2024 VEX Robotics Worlds Championship!
Six Clear Lake High School students participate in two robotics programs, FTC Robotics as “Clear Lake Lion Robotics” and VEX Robotics, as “Team Nice N’ Crispy.” These students have competed in VEX robotics program for more than five years. Each Robotics program uses different robotic parts, different programming, and involves building a bot from scratch to accomplish varied tasks and challenges. It’s extremely rare for kids to be involved in both programs; both are very time-intensive.
Under the direction of Coach Ryan Bowman, the Clear Lake Lion Robotics High School FTC Team won the League Championship on Feb. 10, 2024 and are headed to the State FTC Championship on March 1-2, in Coralville. Just a week later, on Saturday, Feb. 17, Team Nice N’ Crispy took home the state title at the Iowa State VEX Championship in Council Bluffs.
Team Nice N’ Crispy entered the season as the 2023 Iowa State Champions. Due to conflicts with FTC competitions, they competed in their first VEX tournament in January; this is much later than most schools, who entered VEX competitions during the first semester. They entered three VEX tournaments over the season. Because of their skills runs (a separate challenge from the tournament competitions) and performance during the tournament champions at the St. Paul, Minn. tournament in January, they earned a spot to compete at the Iowa State VEX Championship in Council Bluffs last Saturday.
Team Nice N’ Crispy came away as the 2024 Iowa State VEX Tournament Champions along with their alliance partner team. They are the 2024 Iowa Robot Skills Champion (based on having the highest scores in driving and programming skills runs). Team Nice N’ Crispy also won the 2024 Iowa Judge’s Amaze Award for their impressive robot mechanics, programming, scoring, teamwork, and overall performance.
These Back-to-Back State Champions are headed to Worlds to represent Iowa in Dallas in April 2024, where they will complete with VEX Teams from across the United States and the world.
