The Los Angeles Post

Chinese-American Student Robotics Team Wins VEX IQ California State Championship for Third Consecutive Year

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LAPost/Chatsworth, California, USA, (March 1, 2025) – In the recently concluded 2025 VEX IQ Robotics California State Championship, the Team 956A SuperDraco, composed of five Chinese-American middle school students, clinched the middle school championship with exceptional skills and teamwork, defeating their competitors by a staggering 103-point margin. This marks the third consecutive year that team captain Atticus Guo has led his team to victory in the VEX IQ State Championship. The team has also earned the distinction of being the first middle school team in California to secure an early qualification for the 2025 VEX World Championship, which they will compete in this May.

Meet the team from left: Laura Chen, Wantao Li, Atticus Guo, Xingzhuo He, Winnie Luo

The VEX IQ Competition, organized by the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation, is the world’s largest youth robotics event, attracting over a million students aged 8 to 18 from more than 70 countries. Participants are required to design, build, and program robots to complete challenge tasks. Their performance is regarded as a “gold standard” for evaluating STEM proficiency and leadership by top middle schools such as Stevenson School and Harvard-Westlake School, as well as elite universities like MIT and Caltech.

Team 956A SuperDraco in Finals

Atticus Guo, the driving force behind the Team 956A SuperDraco, has a championship-winning track record that reads like a textbook. During the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 seasons, he led the 296A Robokids team to back-to-back victories in both the VEX IQ California State Championship and the U.S. Open National Championship in the elementary school division. After advancing to middle school in the fall of 2024, Atticus teamed up with Xingzhuo He, Winnie Luo, Laura Chen, and Wantao Li to form the new 956A SuperDraco team. Just 66 days later, they won the VEX IQ Signature Event in Detroit, Michigan, in December 2024, with a robot skills score of 620 points, securing an early qualification for the 2025 VEX World Championship and becoming the first middle school team from California to achieve this feat. Their recent state championship victory further demonstrates the team’s comprehensive upgrades in mechanical engineering, programming, and tactical design.

Atticus Guo

“There is no permanent optimal solution in robotics competitions, only a spirit of continuous breakthrough and iteration,” Atticus Guo stated in a post-competition interview. According to Atticus Guo and Xingzhuo He, the team’s technical core, the competition robot underwent dozens of optimizations in structural stability and programming algorithms, ultimately securing victory with a reliable autonomous program. Winnie Luo and Laura Chen, responsible for strategy design, conducted hundreds of simulated tests to develop precise tactics against different robot models. Wantao Li, the team’s loader, maintained a steady rhythm and skilled coordination with Atticus and Xingzhuo, the robot drivers, to efficiently complete the challenge tasks within the time limit.

Behind this “champion team” lies the deep commitment of Chinese-American families to science and technology education. Participation in VEX competitions not only enhances students’ chances of admission to top schools but also cultivates interdisciplinary problem-solving skills. According to the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), students with national-level robotics competition awards have a 42% higher acceptance rate for engineering programs at top 30 universities compared to the average. VEX IQ competition scores are also integrated into the Common Application system, and winners may receive internship recommendations from organizations such as NASA and Lockheed Martin.

Currently, the SuperDraco team is actively preparing for the VEX U.S. Open in April and the VEX World Championship in May. They will travel to Texas in May 2025 to compete against elite teams from over 70 countries for the highest honor in the robotics field. We wish the 956A SuperDraco team success in proving to the world that California’s future of technological innovation is being written by a diverse cultural community.