Marquez Robotics on Top of Worlds

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

Feeding off its success and the lessons learned at the state championships on March 5 in Los Angeles, the Marquez Charter Elementary School Robotix team traveled to Dallas May 10 to 12 to celebrate STEM excellence with over 3,000 teams from 36 countries at VEX Worlds 2022.

Marquez sent two teams, Blue and Red, to the international competition, and both received awards for winning STEM challenges. To accomplish that, Marquez had to beat teams in the technology and science divisions featuring schools representing 42 states and 17 nations.

Team Blue, consisting of the quadruple talents of fourth-graders Lucian Hudson and Maya Pollack along with fifth-graders Morgan Stoler and Nika Honarpour, earned first-place honors for the Promote Award and also took home the Create Award for designing a robot with a creative engineering solution.

Team Red, made up of its own “Fabulous Four” in fourth-graders Jileh Pashmforoush, Aria Mashkouri and Zoe Zajdzinski and fifth-grader Olive Boog, received a trophy for winning the Biomimicry Stem Challenge.

“We’re extremely proud of our teams for representing Marquez Elementary, Pacific Palisades and LAUSD on a world stage,” said Akiko Arevalo, who runs the Marquez program along with second-grade teachers Julie Yoshida and Clare Gardner. “We won awards in three different categories. We’re so proud of the kids, and this is a huge accomplishment on a world stage.”

Marquez had three teams—Blue, Red and Yellow—qualify for the state finals, and although none of them left with awards, they discovered much about the standards, methods and judging, and they applied what they learned through that experience to the Worlds.

Marquez qualified for the state finals after garnering recognition at league competitions and weekend tournaments.

Team Blue made a robotics promotional video, which highlighted the learning and teamwork opportunities of being part of a robotics team. Meanwhile, Team Red opted for the STEM research project, this year’s theme being biomimicry. After first learning what biomimicry is, the team engineered a model of a vaccine shot that would hurt less, using inspiration from the animal kingdom, such as mosquitoes and porcupines.

Marquez started its competitive robotics program four years ago. In its first year, two of its teams qualified for the state tournament and advanced to Nationals in Iowa. In the second year, all three teams qualified for the state finals, but due to the coronavirus outbreak, only one actually competed before all group events were canceled—and that team qualified for Worlds, which would have taken place in Kentucky. In the third year, all three teams qualified for Nationals, but again the event was canceled because of the pandemic.

Marquez Robotix continues to thrive thanks to the support of Principal LaTanya Reeves.