What is Vex Robotics?

VEX Robotics is educational robotics for everyone. VEX solutions span all levels of both formal and informal education with accessible, scalable, and affordable solutions. Beyond science and engineering principles, VEX encourages creativity, teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving among groups. It allows educators of all types to engage and inspire the STEM problem solvers of tomorrow!

Media Kit

• Broll – this was created by a student
• Robotics Kids activities – community outreach and fundraising
• Kids creating dancing robots

Fun Facts/Awards

• Mankato West students have won state every year since 2017 – we’re going to State this year with numerous teams from the HS and MS….it’s incredible to see hundreds of teams in the state with Mankato representing so strongly! …hoping we can make this the 8th straight year next week.
• The kids have won Design Awards, Excellence awards, SKills championships, Programming champs and more at the State level.
• And for WORLDS – where they are competing against thousands of teams – We have gone to World’s every year since 2016 to current….in 2016 we took one team, since 2017 we have taken 3-4 teams to World’s each year, minus 2021(Covid year) we had one qualify but not compete.  2023 we took 5 high school team.  **these numbers don’t include the MS!
• The costs per robot are around $3000 each – this includes motors, batteries, structure, pneumatics, wheels, etc. And travel is typically $50-200 for bus trips and for Worlds (in Dallas), that’s typically $400 per student.
• Commitment of time – These kids work really hard.  From 7th to 12th grade, they’re practicing 2-3 hours 2x per week with the school and take the robot home every day and every weekend.  They’re putting 100s of hours extra into these robots – they’re learning skills to compete but also to cooperate with other schools.
• Gameplay – Each match has 4 robots – 2 random alliances against 2 other random alliances.  Kids have to quickly work through the strategy and strengths of their robots to maximize their points with their partner.  These kids are learning engineering, design, gear ratios, launchers, catapults, flywheels, punchers, fly-sticks, and so much more.

Press Contact

Coach Mark Zenk
Phone Number: 507-207-3882
Email: mzenk2@isd77.org