Community
Promoting Robotics in our Community
We here at Mankato West Robotics pride ourselves on our efforts to spread the VEX Robotics program in our community. The growth of the VEX Robotics program is one of our goals throughout the season. Here are some of the events that we participated in this year to raise awareness of the program to show our commitment to this program and growing it for the future.
Benton County Fair
Before our first regular season tournament, we brought our robots to Benton County Fair and participated in a VEX Tournament. By doing this, we raised awareness of VEX in our area. One of the main focuses of Mankato West Robotics is to promote Robotics and STEM in our community and state of Minnesota.
8th Grade Registration Night Demonstration
On the night of Mankato West registration, many members from the teams came to West and showed off the robots to get new students interested in making Robotics their first club of high school. We garnered plenty of interest and we look forward to a large growth of freshmen in the next year. We also had a great time explaining the rules and how we built the robots to both parents and students.
Subs on the Sidewalk
At Mankato West, we had our annual ‘Subs on the Sidewalk’. At this event, almost all current Mankato West clubs set up booths and students were allowed to explore any clubs they had an interest in over a one-hour lunch period. Since this was before the start of the season, we got many of our current participants through this event.
Minnesota State University, Mankato Tournament
This year, Mankato was able to host our 3rd robotics tournament and our first tournaments (both a high school & middle school) at Minnesota State University, Mankato. 92 teams were able to come and compete to be the best in our hometown. This event showed the growth of the interest in the program here in Mankato. Since there was such a great turn out, another tournament is already in the planning for next year to be held on Friday, December 16, 2022 at MSU Mankato again.