GHS robowranglers 'vex' regional competition

February 20, 2006
Greenville Herald Banner

By Brad Kellar
The Herald Banner

The Greenville High School Robowranglers team has claimed victory in a regional robotics competition.

Using the appropriately named "Clean Sweep" robot, the Robowranglers VEX Team 1148 won the southwest regional round of the FIRST Vex Challenge at the University of Texas at Arlington, according to Vanessa Pope, a teacher who is assisting with the project.

"We went undefeated," Pope said. "We never lost a round."

The team, coached by Johnny Tharp, has qualified for the FIRST national competition, to be held in Atlanta on April 27-28.

The team also won the Vex Challenge Create award and was runner up for the Vex Challenge Think award.

"We're bringing home the gold medals," Pope said.

Vex Team 1148 includes students Kayleigh Cooper, Ethan Isham, Austin Lambert, Logan Marcum, Kory Porter and Justin Tharp. Terri Galloway also assists the team as a teacher. Rack Solutions of Greenville is the team's corporate sponsor.

Introduced in 2005, the FIRST Vex Challenge is the newest competition to be issued by FIRST Robotics.

Teams work together with local engineers to build a Vex robot to compete in one of six regional tournaments. The Robowranglers founded Vex Team 1148 for the 2005-2006 FIRST Vex Challenge. This year's game, "Half-Pipe Hustle," is played on a 10' by 14' playing field. The point of the game is to score balls into one of five goals during separate 30-second autonomous matches and 2-minute human-controlled matches.