TA News

Last week, Thetford Academy’s VEX robotics team 4886 S – Connor Kutter-Walker ’26 and Duncan MacPhee ’27- headed to Maine to compete in the state’s first-ever VEX V5 Signature Event. 

The Robotics Education and Competition Foundation describes these Signature events as “an amped-up version of tournament play,” designed to give students the opportunity to play in a world class tournament. They feature “a level of technical expertise, production value, and overall event quality that is above and beyond that of a standard tournament.”

Maine’s Lobstah Bowl, hosted by the University of Maine at Orono, featured 43 talented teams from across the U.S. and Canada. This year’s game, called “High Stakes” (video at link), challenges teams to score points in both Autonomous (pre-programmed) and Driver-Controlled periods. For the qualification matches, each team is paired up with a randomly chosen alliance team to get an initial ranking. 

TA’s team placed second in the initial qualifying rounds – losing only one game! – and picked a team from California to join them in the elimination rounds. There, Connor says, “We won our first match with ease and our second with similar strength, then in the semi-finals we played a really good duo who we closely lost to, 31-40.” 

Later, he added, “That duo ended up winning the tournament, but we came out very pleased with our performance and even got an award for our programming in the autonomous portion of the match.” Pretty impressive outcome for TA team 4886 S – well done Connor and Duncan!

The two put together a recap video of the competition, too – watch it here!