Four Middle School teams from Panther Robotics competed in the CREATE U.S. Open Robotics Championship in Council Bluffs, Iowa from April 5-7. These teams qualified for this invitation-only event by winning a top award at one of the regular season tournaments. Eighty-nine MS teams from the United States and China competed. Results were:

6842Z PigPen (Zach Phelps, Humza Raza, Edward Hu) earned the Skills Champion award (having posted the highest scores in both driver and programming skill), the "Bracket-Buster" Award, and the Excellence Award. The Excellence Award is "the highest award in VEX robotics and recognizes the most outstanding overall robotics program." PigPen went 9-1 in qualifying rounds and captained the fifth-seed alliance.

6842C Cobra Kai (Daniel de Dios, Tucker Hawkins, Alexander Boeckmann) went 5-5 for the day, finishing 36th.

6842Y Stink Eye (Leo Shaw, Christian Patrick, Matthew Gomez) went 2-8, finishing 76th.

6842B The Borg (Thomas Allen, Jathan Pai, Will Russell, Dillon Cheever, Alexander Hu) also went 2-8 and finished 81st.

Three of the four Panther Robotics teams were selected to join alliances and participated in the elimination rounds.

Next week three Panther Robotics teams, 6842Z PigPen (Zach Phelps, Humza Raza, Edward Hu, Catherine Niculescu), 6842V Viper (Christian Patrick, Leo Shaw, Sragvee Atluri), and 6842A Aftershock (Ellis Lacy, Olivia Weymuth, Yash Dandamudi), will represent Park Tudor in the upcoming VEX World Championships in Louisville, April 25-28. Best of luck to Panther Robotics!