GREEN BAY, Wis. — The 2024 Wisconsin State Vex Robotics tournament wrapped up its championship play this weekend.

The competition at the Resch Center in Green Bay featured elementary- and university-level teams from around the state. Middle and elementary school students battled it out Sunday.


What You Need To Know

  • 48 middle school teams and 36 elementary school teams from around the state competed Sunday

  • Organizers said robotics enhances STEM education by offering immersive, practical learning opportunities

  • Robotics is growing in popularity. A total of 395 teams participated this year and in 2010, 26 teams competed

Organizers said over the past decade, the crowds have gotten bigger as the popularity of the sport continues to grow.

Students in the game-based engineering challenge design and build a robot. Isabelle Knutson and Caradee Biesterveld, seventh-grade partners from Xavier Middle School in Appleton, said it’s taken months and lots of trial and error to construct their more than 700-piece robot. 

“We drew out some of our own ideas, put them on pieces of paper or whiteboards everywhere,” Knutson said.

“We will build about three prototypes and we test each of those individually. We measure the pros and cons,” Biesterveld said.

Knutson said her dad is an engineer, and she’s always been fascinated with robots.

“I was really interested in building all kinds of different things, taking apart small toys and rebuilding them and just finding random things to build,” Knutson said.

Like Knutson, Biesterveld said her family encouraged her love of robotics.

“I’m a huge science code nerd. So my mom’s like, ‘oh, you can do robotics?’” Biesterveld said.

Ron Lohse is an organizer with Wisconsin’s Vex Robotics Competition. He said more and more students like Knutson and Biesterveld are growing to love this sport. He said in 2010, there were 26 teams and now there are hundreds.

“We have 395 teams total across all platforms this year. Last year, it was probably 310. So, it’s growing quite dramatically,” Ron Lohse said. 

Lohse has been a teacher for 34 years. He said robotics competitions allow kids to put STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) concepts into action and they’re also learning soft skills that can’t be taught in the classroom.

“They’re learning problem-solving. They’re learning conflict resolution. They’re learning communication. You’re getting kids that are learning how to talk to adults, and explain to them what they’ve done so that by the time they get out into the workforce, they’re comfortable doing that kind of thing,” Lohse said.

In a scrimmage, Knutson and Biesterveld’s robot worked as designed. It collected green and purple blocks and dumped them into a goal, which made the teammates proud. 

“It’s just amazing. I didn’t think that I could build something that works so well,” Knutson said.

“It’s really cool to see how it works and how it drives and just seeing how well it can come together,” Biesterveld said.