Photo courtesy of Vestavia HIlls High School
A team from Vestavia Hills High School won the school's first-ever state robotics championship on Feb. 16, 2025. Team members included Ali Fatahallah-Shaykh, Lindsey Bube, Wilks DeArman, Eric Li, Jackson Moore, Baylor Garrett and Liam Booker.
A team from Vestavia Hills High School won the school’s first-ever robotics state championship this month, Coach Pam Hickman said.
The team — Ali Fatahallah-Shaykh, Lindsey Bube, Wilks DeArman, Eric Li, Jackson Moore, Baylor Garrett and Liam Booker — won the Feb. 16 state tournament at Auburn University from among 48 teams across the state, Hickman said.
The team first had to make it through 120 qualifying matches to make it into the top 16 teams and then came out on top in the final elimination rounds, she said.
Teams design and build their own robot and then must complete certain tasks with the robot, such as stacking rings, moving the stack of rings into a corner and climbing a ladder, Hickman said.
This same team also won the Excellence Award at the state competition, after being judged on things such as an engineering notebook that showed how they built and redesigned their robot over the course of this year and interviews with judges in which each team member explained their role on the team, she said.
The team now moves on to the VEX Worlds competition in Dallas, which will include more than 800 teams from 40 countries in May, Hickman said.
