After sweeping the Southern New York State Championships, a local robotics team earned a spot on the global stage.
Coast 2 Coast Robotics (C2C), a Bayside-based robotics academy serving K-12 students, capped off a successful competitive season by qualifying for the international VEX Robotics World Championship.
Earlier this spring, C2C played a key role in organizing this year’s VEX IQ and VEX V5 Southern New York State Championships. The academy partnered with Deanna O’Campo of John F. Kennedy High School in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District to co-host the events.
The first round of championship tournaments took place on March 9 at the Reckson Center at the Museums at Mitchel—Cradle of Aviation. That day featured the VIQRC Elementary School, VIQRC Middle School, and V5RC Middle School Southern New York State Championships. C2C then hosted the V5RC High School Southern New York State Championship on March 15 at John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore.
C2C primarily prepares students for Vex V5 and Vex IQ robotics competitions.
C2C’s middle school VEX IQ team won the excellence and skills champion award, while its VEX V5 middle school team won the excellence and tournament championship awards. One of C2C’s high school teams also won the design and tournament championship awards.
A selection of C2C’s award-winning teams headed to Dallas, Texas, for the Vex Robotics World Championship this month. The international competition has the same events on a global scale, battling against teams around the world.
Students prepared for the state championship program for over a year. During this period, they built, coded, and developed robots to compete in the two-part state-wide competition. At the competition, the teams must explain their process to a panel of judges and compete in multiple events, including robot battles, teamwork matches, and solo team events.
Kayla Ho, founder of C2C, said she’s proud of her students’ growth and determination. “ They really gave it their all. It’s a culmination of a year of hard work,” she said. “I was just very proud of them and very excited to see how far they’ve come over a year, because some of our kids, they’ve only been doing robotics for a year,” she explained.
Ho said she’s constantly impressed by the ingenuity and creativity her students have demonstrated. ‘ You can see that engineering mindset that the kids have. “I think it’s always amazing to see”, she added. “They just do their own thing and try to come up with something as creative and unique as possible that is also really efficient and consistent.”
Many of her students are buzzing with excitement for the international championship. “World is the event of the year. Everyone wants to go. The event is indescribable. You feel the energy, the excitement, and the enthusiasm from everybody,” she said.
Ho, an electrical engineer by degree, said that she fell in love with robotics in high school, further developing her interest in college, where she participated in robotics competitions.
In college, Ho coached and mentored youngsters competing in robotics competitions, and her interest sparked the founding of C2C in 2018. “It’s very much started as a passion project. It started out as a very small group of kids who really liked it. It’s grown to five or six teams across the different programs,” she added. Currently, C2C has about 40 kids in the program, split between its five teams.“ Our focus is helping prepare kids for the next generation… of engineering, STEM leaders, and scientists. So they have interests in various topics, whether engineering, medical, or the sciences,” said Ho.
