North County High School’s Cyber Knights robotics team stepped into the global spotlight last week, emerging from the Vex V5 World Robotics Championships with a top 50 finish to culminate an outstanding season.
At the competition in St. Louis, the Cyber Knights were tasked with engineering and piloting custom-built robots to outmaneuver opponents using strategy and precision driving skills. Students also had to write complex code that allowed the robot to navigate the arena using sensors and logic to score points without human control.
More than 70,000 high school robotics teams compete around the world annually. Slightly more than 1 percent of them – just 850 teams – qualify for the world championships.
“Our students were competitive, learned a lot, made new friends and left with incredible memories,” said Cyber Knights coach Josh Jack, who is the CTE Department Chair at North County. “They are impressive representatives of North County High School and Anne Arundel County Public Schools.”
Last week’s competition consisted of teams from all 50 states and 43 different countries. There were 10 teams from Maryland, with North County being the lone one to represent Anne Arundel County.
The team consists of seniors Zach Labib, Francisco Vasquez-Sanchez, Rohan Indukuri, Ava Karopchinsky and Aadil Amatya along with junior Shadeed Farooq. In addition to Jack, the team is coached by North County CTE teacher Ned Sherman.
