Cooley students compete in state robotics competition

Cooley Middle School students spent months designing, building and coding robots as part of the school’s robotics team this year.

After several rounds of weekend competitions, two qualifying teams made it to the Arizona VEX IQ middle school championships.

Team 7589A – Ryan Nguyen, Lucas Sacdalan and Luke Erickson – finished tied for fifth overall out of 30 of the best robots from across the state.

“It was really exciting and fun. There was a lot to do and accomplish. We are so proud of our fifth-place finish,” Lucas said.

Team 12354B – Jonathan Harmsen and Will Robinson – made it to the finals alliances and made a very strong showing after an extremely successful season.

“We did pretty well! We are proud of how we did this season. We could’ve changed our design a bit, but we’re happy with how we did,” Will said.

Both teams are coached by Joseph Bisaccia and Tyler Hettick at Cooley.

“I’m really proud of the students. They worked exceptionally hard all year long and accomplished all of their goals for the robotics season,” Bisaccia said.