On March 13, the Philadelphia 76ers held their first ever Robotics Night to raise STEM awareness. The 76ers gave us use of the court from 12-3 p.m. to setup, run the tournament, and break down. At 12:30 we began matches. Ten VRC teams and 10 VEX IQ teams ran four matches each. After the matches, two-team alliances competed in the semi finals, and finals. Two Haverford teams, Team 169b and 169y, were Tournament Champions and received their trophy and got their pictures taken on the Court.

Two VEX IQ Challenge Teamwork Finals matches ran during the 76ers pregame show in front of fans who came to see the 76ers defeat the Sacramento Kings. We brought two fields onto the court and had all of the students who competed that day stand behind the fields cheering on the top two alliances as they ran their one minute match. The winning alliance, Team 10497b, the QCS Robo-Bears from Quakertown Christian School in Quakertown, Pennsylvania and Team 3615s, Triangle Robotics of Triangle Elementary School in Triangle, Virginia, got their pictures taken on the court with their trophies.

During the game, we had a VRC field and VEX IQ field set up for fans to stop by and play a game of Robot Freeze Tag. People who had come to the game found themselves out in the concourse having fun driving robots and learning about how to start their own VEX Robotics Competition and VEX IQ Challenge Team.

Special thanks to SySTEMic Solutions for event photography and for helping run the tournament in the afternoon and for iDesign for helping with the robot demonstrations in the Concourse during the basketball game.

GREENVILLE, TX – March 4, 2015 – The Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 2015 Online Challenges, which encourages students to apply what they’ve learned through VEX Robotics to produce videos, photography, share website design, communicate research, or work on engineering design. Students who submit have an opportunity to share their ideas, win prizes and even garner a chance to compete at the VEX Robotics World Championship.

For a complete list of all the winners and finalists, please visit: www.RoboticsEducation.org/Online-Challenges. The VEX Robotics World Championship will take place in Louisville, Ky. on April 15-18. For details on additional upcoming events, please visit www.RobotEvents.com, a unique resource for teams and event partners to register and share updates from their robotics competitions. For more information about the REC Foundation, please visit www.RoboticsEducation.org.

About the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation

The REC Foundation seeks to increase student interest and involvement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by engaging students in hands-on, sustainable and affordable curriculum-based robotics engineering programs across the U.S. and internationally. The REC Foundation develops partnerships with K-12 education, higher education, government, industry, and the non-profit community to achieve this work.