The yearly county-wide EV3 and NXT robot fight known as Robo-Sumo took place on Thursday, April 13 in the Middle School gym. Each team built a robot before the competition and made small adjustments to either their robot or programming. There are two divisions, an upper division, and a lower division. 

The lower division consists of students from grades 3-6 while the upper division is made up of grades 7-12. The robot known as The Fortress from Hopewell took victory over the lower division while Smol Cavs also from Hopewell won in the upper division. After the competition, The Fortress and Smol Cavs faced off, but The Fortress was no match for Soml Cavs. 

In the lower division, Scorpio from Riverside won second while The_Fortress (not to be confused with The Fortress) from Freedom took third. Meanwhile, in the upper division, Open Nu Noor from Hopewell took second place and Injustice, from Hopewell third place. 

“It was really fun to build and see robots fight to the death,” Lucas Verosky, fifth-grade student and Freedom Robo-sumo team member said.

Freedom students Lucas Verosky, Lincoln Murphy, and Lucas Miller built The_Fortress and battled up to third place, and Shane McGowan created a robot known as Brian. Elementary schoolers even got in on the action cheering on Freedom teams. Freedom had one elementary team, made up of fourth graders Lincoln Hoover and Cooper Valko. 

Each team fights seven seeding rounds, then the top eight teams in each division are chosen for the bracket. Each team works their way up the bracket until there is only one team left in each division. If the two winners have time they may battle each other to see who has the best bot. This year the winners were The Fortress and Smol Cavs. The Fortress battled Smol Cavs, but was sadly knocked off the board and lost.