Students from The Dalles robotics teams achieved multiple awards and top-five finishes at the VEX Robotics state championship in Salem this month, and The Dalles Middle School’s team, System Overload, beat 57 high school and 12 middle school teams to finish 3rd overall, won the Middle School Excellence Award and qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championship.

VEX’s 2018-19 competition game, “Turning Point,” involves stacking caps on posts, flipping caps, stacking balls on caps, toggling flags by throwing balls, and parking robots; teams work together to design, build and program a robot to efficiently solve the challenges involved in those tasks. Seventy-six teams from across Oregon, including middle and high school students, participated in the two-day event.