Alex Hughes

Mentoring for the best robotics team in Texas

After moving to Texas, saying goodbye to my other robotics teams in the process, I started looking for a new team to help out in the Austin area. I soon received a message from a local mentor with a relatively young team from Vandergrift High School called "Valor", and I decided to start mentoring with them in the Fall of 2021.

The students and mentors on this team were so passionate and skilled, unlike any team I had seen previously. The mentors were incredibly knowledgable, and they passed their skills on to the students who were able to effectively engineer an amazing robot.

Then we just started winning. And winning. And winning. We went undefeated at our first competition, won our second, crushed the state championships, and I got to go on to the World Championships for the first time in my life. We won the first-ever UIL State Robotics award, and leading up to World Championships we were rated #7 in the world.

Valor showed me new skills, mentorship techniques, and what is possible when you have a team of passionate and skilled engineers surrounding you.