ORANGE TOWNSHIP — One robot, three fifth-graders and two coaches could put Mapleton Middle School in a world spotlight — pending a win at the VEX Robotics World Championship.
The Banana Boyz team will take the Mapleton Robotics program to its third World-stage competition, hoping to bring home the first win.
Caius Romesberg, Leyton Smith and Liem Marietta have over a month to fine-tune their robot ahead of the competition in St. Louis, Missouri, from April 28 to 30, where over 400 teams will compete for a spot in the finals.
The trio qualified for the spot after winning the design award at the VEX Ohio State Championship on March 7 in Dayton.
The award recognizes a team’s ability to document and explain their engineering design process via engineering notebook and team interview, according to the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation judging guide.
The Banana Boyz were not alone in their win: Team Flame ranked in fifth place at the finals and El Robot Noodles brought home the Judges Award for the second year in a row for exemplary effort and sportsmanship.
They will need to win 10 qualification matches in their division to secure a spot in the finals.
“They’re working on making sure their robot can efficiently grab those pins and make the stacks and then put them on beams, and that scores different combinations of points. So, they’re trying to get the highest point total possible,” coach Craig Wentworth said.
Teams are paired up with other teams from around the world where they must communicate and strategize how to get the best score for the match.
Romesberg and Smith estimate they’ve put anywhere from 16 to 30 hours into building the robot already, and with twice-weekly two-hour practices, those hours will continue to add up.
Smith said he’s nervous but excited for the competition.
“All these other teams that we’re going to go up against are on a whole other level than us, so we’re just going in to have fun and just enjoy it,” he said.
What started as an after-school program using Lego Mindstorms has transformed into a highly-praised club offering four different programs based on level of experience.
Photos of the Banana Boyz at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force for the VEX Ohio State Championship March 1-2. Images provided by Kent Romesberg.
History of the robotics program
The Mapleton Robotics program unofficially got off the ground in 2015 with the help of its founder, then technology teacher Wentworth.
That first year, students dabbled in engineering, learning to build and code robots for a sumo bot competition.
The program continued to evolve, switching to the VEX IQ platform — a snap-together, plastic robotics system designed for middle school students to learn STEM, coding, and engineering — offering a nine-week robotics elective at the middle school.
That course turned into a full-year competition team class allowing the two participating students to design, build and code during the class then compete on the weekends around the state.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and with it came staffing changes, forcing the elective underground.
But Wentworth wouldn’t accept it. So the next year, he and new staff member Bryan Spade joined forces to revive robotics as an after-school club with 15 students on five teams.
“When I joined the staff here, they asked me if I was interested in coaching robotics and honestly, I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I was along for the ride,” Spade said.
“Since 2021, Mapleton has had 31 teams, serving 65 unique students, many of whom are now seeking careers in an engineering or coding-related field,” Wentworth wrote in a press release.
The two coaches have helped the program expand to a total of four programs across the elementary and middle schools, and watched the program hit some major milestones, including:
- Coach Matt Sullivan joining the team in 2023.
- The district growing the VEX IQ program to eight teams with 24 students and adding VEX V5 with three teams and 10 more students.
- School district administration planning to add a fourth V5 team for the 2026-2027 season in response to program popularity.
- Mapleton Robotics securing spots at the state tournament each year, and now a third trip to the world stage.
The Banana Boyz all plan to stay in the program for the rest of their time at the middle school.
The VEX program leaves all the responsibility to the students, including all the designing, building, testing, coding and documentation of the design process.
Coaches and parents are forbidden from touching the robots or providing designs and codes.
“I think it gives them a hands-on outlet to work through that design process and fail forward. Each time they come up against the challenge, then it’s time to go back to the drawing board and figure out how they’re going to solve that problem and test it,” Spade said.
Wentworth has seen the success of the robotics program at Mapleton and he knows other schools would see the same success.
He encourages any districts or school staff members interested in starting a robotics program to reach out to him at cwentworth@imountie.org.
