Brownell Talbot’s robotics team, 1028A Washed, made a huge impression this past weekend while competing at the North Dakota Signature Event. Signature Events are some of the biggest and most competitive tournaments in VEX Robotics, second only to Worlds and Nationals. Teams travel from across the country—and sometimes internationally—to compete, and strong performances can qualify teams for the World Championship.
The North Dakota Signature Event took place over Friday January 9th, and Saturday January 10th, and was one of the largest competitions of the season. Team 1028A is made up of seven Upper School students: Cillian Rochling ’26, Eric Zhou ’26, Chris Holtzclaw ’27, Wesley Wildes ’27, Angel Bhandari ’26, Rital Miller ’26, and Lara Blume ’28. For this event, four team members—Cillian, Eric, Chris, and Wesley—traveled to North Dakota to compete.
Friday the team began with the Skills Competition, which measures how well a robot performs on its own, without help from another team. Skills is split into two parts. The first is Driver Skills, where the driver has one minute to manually control the robot and score as many points as possible. The second is Programming Skills, where the robot must score points entirely on its own using pre-written code, with no human control. Wesley Wildes serves as both the driver and the programmer for the team.
Team 1028A scored 93 points in Driver Skills and 83 points in Programming Skills, earning a combined score of 176 points. This was the highest skills score at the entire event, earning them the Skills Champion Award. Their programming skills run was so impressive that event organizers asked the team to demonstrate and explain their route to the entire audience, an opportunity that is rarely given to any team at a competition.
In addition to Skills, the team competed in qualification matches, which are similar to traditional sports games. In these matches, two teams are randomly paired together as an alliance and compete against another alliance. Teams earn rankings based on how many matches they win, as well as how well they perform during the first 15 seconds of each match, called the autonomous period, when robots operate on pre-written code without driver control.
Team 1028A finished the qualification matches with an impressive 9–1 record, placing them 1st overall. This top ranking gave them the advantage of leading alliance selection, a process where the highest-ranked teams choose which other teams they want to partner with for the final elimination rounds. Team 1028A selected Team 5069Y Havoc from Millard North, creating a Nebraska–Nebraska alliance at a national-level competition.
The two Nebraska teams continued their success through the elimination matches, ultimately earning the Tournament Champion title together. As part of their victory, they also received a $500 gift card in recognition of their achievement. Furthermore, the team also won the Think Award, which recognizes teams for exceptional and well-organized programming—not just how many points their robot scores. To earn this award, teams must demonstrate successful autonomous and programming skills runs, write clean and well-commented code, and clearly explain how their programs work and why specific design decisions were made. Judges also evaluate how teams manage updates to their code, collaborate effectively, and document their entire programming process in an engineering notebook.
By the end of the weekend, Team 1028A had been named Tournament and Skills Champions and had received the Think Award, marking a dominant performance at one of the most competitive robotics events of the season. The team’s season is far from over. In two weeks, they all will travel to Utah to compete in another Signature Event, which is expected to be even more competitive than the North Dakota tournament. Utah Signature Events are known for attracting some of the strongest and most experienced teams in the country, making the level of play significantly higher.
This means tougher matches and less room for mistakes. Competing at this level pushes teams to refine their robot design, improve their programming, and make smarter in-match decisions. After proving themselves in North Dakota, Team 1028A will enter Utah with confidence—but also with the challenge of facing top teams where every point matters. With another world-qualifying opportunity on the line, the Utah event will be a major test of the team’s skills and consistency, and a chance for Brownell Talbot Robotics to continue making a name for itself on the national stage.
