Teams from Oregon and Washington vie for awards at Sandy High School on Jan. 11

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Sixty high school and 25 middle school robotics teams competed at Sandy High on Saturday, Jan. 11.

While Sandy's teams fought hard, they gained more in experience than awards. Freshman teams 1460M and 1460W both lost in the quarterfinals to the more seasoned Sandy High team of 1460E. Team 1460E went on to compete in divisional finals. The all-girls team of 1460K from Sandy lost to other Sandy team 1460S in the final match of the divisional finals. Team 1460S then went on to place second in the finals.

"I am extremely happy with how well the kids have done, and we look forward to competing on Saturday (Jan. 18) at North Marion High," said Sandy High coach Aron Eslinger. "I also want to thank all the volunteers who took time out of their Saturday to help make this tournament a success. We had over 45 volunteers from employees at OnSemi and Multi-Tech to parents and staff, who helped fill roles from judging to refereeing to running the concession stand. Without them this event would not have happened."

A group of 14 different schools attended the tournament, coming from as far away as Klamath Falls and even out of state from Vancouver, Wash., to make this the second largest VEX robotics competition in the state.

Meet the teams

1460S:

Orion Skinner, Chase Richards, Bradly Irwin, Ryan Gupton

1460E:

Andrew Hokanson, Jordan Cotton, Esten Barker, Nicky Chan, Evan Hageman

1460K:

Madison Littlejohn, Ava Barker, Amilie Gresham

1460M:

Jeshua Milbradt

1460W:

Daniel Banister, Octavio Hirata, Aydin Lutmer