Tampa Prep robotics teams continued their impressive dominance, sending two teams to the VEX Worlds Robotics Competition, April 25 – 27 in Dallas TX.
Team 727 Red, captained by Daphne Thinakaran with members Casey Kittredge ’25, Calvin Vo ’25, Nathan Valladares ’25, Jai Padhya ’26 and Lauren Brill ’27, ended with a 7-3-0 record in qualification rounds earning them a 24th ranking in their Engineering Division of 80+ robots!
Team 727 Gold, captained by Elise Bertolino ’24 with members Cedric Thinakaran ’26, Adin Shah ’26, Davis Shapiro ’26, Leela Prakash ’26, and Kat Grubbs ’24 ended with a 6-4-0 record but because of key win points, they earned a ranking of 18th in the Science Division of 80+ robots!
Because of 727 Gold’s ranking, they made it to the elimination round of 16 in which the top 32 teams of the Science Division pair up to get to the final top robot in the division. Though they lost in the eliminations, this is the best record a Tampa Prep team has ever done at VEX Worlds. This puts 727 Gold at 193rd in the World rankings (out of 13,600+), which is in the top 1% of teams in the world! Team 727 Gold also scored well in the skills portion and earned a 76th ranking (also a new record for a Tampa Prep team) in Worlds Skills.
Overall, the 2023-24 school year was the most successful in the history of Tampa Prep! All four Upper School teams and the middle school team made it to VEX States (the second time in a row). The teams won a combined 11 trophies (most ever in a season) including 3 Excellence Awards (best robot in tournament) and a VEX States Skills banner (our 8th banner).
Amazing accomplishment!!
