By Zach Spicer
During the VEX Robotics World Championship in early May, the game for the next season is announced.
Robotics doesn’t have an offseason.
Since that announcement, teams from around the globe began looking at the manual for the 2025-26 games — Mix & Match for VEX IQ and Push Back for VEX V5 Robotics Competition — as they geared up for a new challenge.
Seymour High School’s robotics program is among that group.
The week of June 2 to 6, robotics team members are gathering for four hours in the afternoon each day for a camp.
For the season, SHS will have 24 team members on five teams. Plus, there will be four Seymour Middle School eighth graders competing up at the V5 level.
Twenty of the students are attending the camp.
“It’s always team bonding is No. 1,” SHS and SMS robotics coach Amy Jo Miller Kuzel said. “We have a lot of new teams. I put them together with who they want to be with, and sometimes, it’s all new teams, so team bonding is the big thing.”
It’s also time for the teams to think, strategize, plan and work on the engineering notebook.
“One hundred percent that notebook is key to where they want to go,” Miller Kuzel said. “They have to have it. They also have that embedded in them now.”
On the first day of the camp, the team members learned behavior and language expectations and professionalism and team collaboration and discussed team names, mascots and themes. They also discussed thoughts on the game challenge, goals for the season and robot ideas, and there were presentations on robot designing, engineering notebook and judging and expectations.
The second day will consist of working on rules, base robot analysis and innovation, while the third day will include lectures on CAD and programming.
The group will tour Guardian Bikes in Seymour on the fourth day, and the final day will consist of design.
Even before the camp, teams have talked via group chats, and parents and judges have worked on planning. Robotics is a year-round activity for all involved.
“It’s cool. This is how it’s supposed to be,” Miller Kuzel said. “It’s supposed to be as soon as May hits, you go. Otherwise, you can’t keep up with the competition if you don’t give them that time and if you don’t give them that freedom.”
