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Writes Thurstan H. (4ths)

On Sunday 26 April, at 8am, all of Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥_OMN1 gathered at Heathrow, to get to St Louis. We were all super excited. After doing exceptionally well at Nationals, winning both the teamwork and skills sections, we were confident we could do well in the World Championship. At 11:30am we boarded our flight to Atlanta, to catch a connection to St Louis from there. This was the first year Vex worlds was in St Louis, as previously, it was in Dallas, Texas. We eventually arrived at The Grand Plaza Hotel after 20 hours of travelling. We were all very tired and just wanted to sleep, after crossing multiple time zones.

On the second day of the trip, we focused on exploration. We started by heading towards the convention centre, which is where the competition was being held. It was a huge place, filled with different teams from all around the world, including the USA, China, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Türkiye, and a lot more.

On that day, it was the final day of the V5 competition (V5 is the more advanced version of the vex we were doing). We met up with the other Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥ team there (from V5) – the Î÷Ê©Ö±²¥ Mavericks. We watched a couple of their matches and settled in, reflecting that we would be there for the next few days. We then went to explore the city,including the famous St. Louis Arch, and the St Cardinals Baseball stadium. But, as we started to look for food, we heard tornado sirens and we got many notifications on our phone. So, to stay safe, what better thing is there to do than head inside… into an Escape Room?! We managed to complete with less than a minute remaining.

Day Three of the trip was the most eventful day we had. At the start, it was normal. We had breakfast and made our way to the centre. This was the first day of our competition! We started off by setting up our area, with UK flags and our bits and bobs that we needed, and then went to inspection. Here, we had some difficulties. Lubricant was not permitted, so we had to spend over three and a half hours rebuilding half the robot. However, our tenacity and diligence impressed the judges a lot. We then had one practice match, and one qualification match that day, which we did make in time. We ended up scoring 182 in our qualification match, which is all right considering we had just rebuilt the robot (!), however far below the par for Worlds.

Day 4 and 5 were similar, opening with a normal start, followed by a trip to the venue, where we engaged in lots of practicing with other teams. These two days contained the most actual robotics of the trip. In the afternoon of Day 5 we watched the finals of the competition, where we got to watch other teams from all around the world battle it out to see who is the best. We saw max score matches (443 points) paired with high intensity moments, which was unbelievably exciting. It was such an amazing experience to see so many people all cheering each other on and being so invested into robotics. After this, we also went to the city museum, with John Lyon (another UK school) whose team that we had become close with at the event.

Day 6 was all about sight-seeing. We went to the St Louis Arch, and saw the view from the top, going up and down in tiny little pods from the 70s. Dramatically, when we reached the bottom, we were informed that our flight home was cancelled, due to storms in Atlanta. We quickly adapted our plans, visiting the Missouri History museum, followed by lunch in a nice soda themed restaurant in the Del Mar Loop, which even had an old wooden tram service. Due to the cancellation, we got to go to a St Louis Cardinals baseball game, which in my opinion, was the best event there. We got to go to the Cardinals’ shop and bought ourselves some souvenirs. They even gave us free Cardinals Jerseys, and because we were part of the first 15,000, we all got one, which is amazing, considering our cheap seats! It was a very good match, and the St Louis Cardinals won 7-2.

After our bonus evening, Day 7 was marked return. After an amazing trip. we were all glad to get back. We would like to thank Mr. Willson and Mr. Carlon for sacrificing so much to make this a very memorable VEX trip; for many of us, it was also our first time in the US! I must say a special thanks to Mr. Carlon, who had to run with all of our bags on multiple occasions!