By Kevin Hendricks
Moriarty High School’s newly formed NM-MESA robotics team has had quite a debut season, winning the VEX V5 NM State Championship in early March and qualifying for the World Championship in Dallas in May.
The team is composed of freshmen, sophomores, and seniors with a focus on competition and small-scale robotics. It built two competitive robots named Atlas and Phil.
After participating in three tournaments, including a win at the Carlsbad Caveman tournament, both Atlas and Phil qualified for the state championship. They dominated the qualifying rounds, earning the top two seeds, with Phil going 7-0-1 and Atlas 7-1 out of 22 teams.
For the elimination rounds, the MHS teams joined forces, securing the number one alliance seed. They advanced through the quarterfinals and semifinals with impressive victories. In the final best-of-three contest, they won the first match, lost the second, but rallied to win the decisive third match, claiming the state championship.
The team’s state victory means the team will now compete at the VEX V5 World Championship in Dallas from May 6-8, joining 800 top teams from 75 countries.