On Friday 30th January, three Yr. 7 students from Raynes Park High School took part in the London VEX Robotics Regional Finals, at Highgate School in North London. They had spent weeks designing and building their robot, and competed against 32 teams from 20 other schools. Design Engineer, Matthew McInnes-Swaney has led the design of the robot, and expertly navigated it through 7 rounds of matches. In each match they had to work with another team to collect and stack as many blocks as they could in 60 seconds. Strong support from his teammates, Grant Woods and Tony Quipse meant that they went into the finals in 12th place. The excitement did not end there, as the team posted the highest team score of the day to put themselves and their alliance team into 1st place. An anxious final few matches had to be played, as the team looked on, hoping their score was enough to qualify for the National Championships. Sadly, another team matched their score in their final match, and qualified ahead of them, on the basis of having stacked more blocks in their 8 matches. The Raynes Park Robotics team came in a gallant 2nd place, equal on score to the winners. A great result for their first time in the competition.

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