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Abi Douglas-Lott, Digital Media Specialist
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 13, 2025

PETAL, Miss. –  Petal Middle School’s (PMS) FireHawks Robotics Team 49378F has earned top honors at the Mississippi VEX IQ State Robotics Competition, taking home both the Excellence Award and the Skills Champion Award. These prestigious awards qualify the team to compete at the VEX IQ World Championship in Dallas, Texas, set for May 12–14, 2025.

The FireHawks Team consists of students Allen DeLeo, Claire Dickinson, Ava Foley and Hugh Sheffield, who have spent countless hours designing, building, and programming their robot to meet this year’s VEX IQ engineering challenge. Guided by their advisor, Christy Sheffield, and working collaboratively, the students demonstrated exceptional problem-solving, innovation and teamwork throughout the season.

“I’m incredibly proud of our students for their remarkable ability to apply the engineering design process—not only to identify and understand complex challenges but also to design, build and program robots capable of solving them,” said Sheffield. “These students have dedicated hundreds of hours outside the classroom, constantly testing, refining and improving their designs before putting them to the test in high-stakes competition.”

Throughout the year, PMS’s Robotics teams meet after school, with additional practices on weekends. They have competed in three regional tournaments across Mississippi in addition to the state championship. At each event, students submit detailed engineering notebooks, participate in interviews and demonstrate their robot’s abilities in both autonomous and teamwork driving challenges.

The FireHawks’ achievements are a testament to the hard work and commitment of these young engineers and their dedication to excellence.

To learn more about the VEX Robotics Competition, visit www.recf.org.

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