We are so excited to welcome you and your teams to the 2025 Ohio VEX Robotics State Championship at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio!! You will be joining us with the best of the best teams in Ohio for this state championship event and we can't wait to see the exciting gameplay and Ohio's culmination of the 2024-2025 season!

On the note of being in an exciting new venue this year, we ask you and thank you in advance for your patience and grace as we navigate the planning and preparations for this event. We are confident that the venue will be fantastic, but there are still unknowns that we just won't learn until we are there in the thick of it. And even from the museum standpoint, there are things they don't know about how VEX Robotics competition should run or that our community expects. It definitely has been and continues to be a learning process! We ask that you be flexible and go with the flow, maybe lend a hand when or where needed, and know that we are ferociously taking notes on how to make improvements not only from day to day this year (maybe even from hour to hour), but also as we look ahead to next year.

Please take a look at the information below to help plan your time in Dayton and feel free to share this with your students & families. We are looking forward to seeing you and your teams soon!

Location:

1100 Spaatz St, Dayton, OH, United States, Ohio

• Admission to the museum and parking are FREE.
• The museum is the world's largest military aviation museum, spanning 1,120,000 square feet of exhibit space across four buildings. It is BIG, so please plan accordingly!
• Our event will be within the museum and will take place while the museum is open to the public.
• Wear comfortable shoes!
• Teams may want to utilize small carts to transport their equipment into the building as well as between their pits and the competition area. Please be mindful not to leave carts in walkways and use caution amongst museum-goers. We will have a designated area to park carts near the queuing area.
• Check out the museum website for more details. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Elementary VEX IQ

Middle School VEX IQ

Thursday/Friday, March 13th-14th: Middle School VRC

Saturday/Sunday, March 15th-16th: High School VRC

There are still quite a few teams with outstanding registration fees! Please check your Robot Events account and make sure that payment for your state championship fees has been processed ASAP!

Seriously, we need lots of volunteers.

We need every team to provide at least one volunteer. There are still plenty of opportunities to help out each day, but especially on VEX IQ days. Please share this with parents, students, fellow educators, friends, family, and potential volunteers in your community.

Can't commit to volunteering while your team is competing? Help with set up or tear down, or there is plenty to do even when matches are not happening.

Coaches, consider volunteering for a day when you are not coaching. VEX IQ coaches would make great judges for VRC and VRC coaches would make great judges for VEX IQ! What a great opportunity to see first hand what the other part of our robotics community is doing!

All this to say, sign up today! SHARE, SHARE, SHARE!

Sign Up link below! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

The museum strictly prohibits any food and drink from being brought into the museum. Teams may not have any food or snacks at their pit tables, which will be located throughout the museum. Bottled water IS permitted inside the museum. According to the museum website, water bottles must be clear, sealed bottles, up to 20 oz.

Please plan accordingly to adhere to these policies. You will need to plan ahead for your lunch arrangements.

1. Pre-order lunches from the on-site Valkyrie Cafe. The order deadline has passed. See details below.

2. There are 2 food concessions options within the museum, the Valkyrie Cafe and the Launchpad Shop N’ Snack, offering cold sandwiches, snacks, and beverages. Teams may utilize these options at any time during their days at the museum, but be aware that options are limited. Food purchased in these areas must be eaten there and may not be brought into the museum or taken to the pit areas.

3. The museum has outdoor picnic areas available in Memorial Park. Teams who wish to bring their lunch or utilize delivery options such as DoorDash must eat their food outside. Ohio weather in mid-March may or may not be cooperative for a picnic lunch!

Please keep in mind that the scheduled lunch break may only be approximately 30 minutes long. It is not recommended that students leave the museum premises for lunch.

We have heard from a few of you with concern about your students who have food allergies and cannot eat the limited pre-order options. We asked and have been given permission by the museum to allow those students to pack a lunch AND be allowed to eat inside the designated lunch area (instead of the outdoor picnic area). If this applies to a student or coach on your team, please email me your request for permission, the team#, and the program (VEXIQ-ES, VEXIQ-MS, VRC-MS, or VRC-HS).

1. There will be a copy of your order(s) in your team's registration packet, for reference.
2. Go to the Valkyrie Cafe between 9:30-11:00 am to pay for your pre-orders (payment options include cash or credit card only). It is located upstairs near the museum entrance.
3. Pre-Orders will be delivered as they are ready to the lunch area in Building 3 (Cold War Gallery) starting at 11:30 am. This is the same building where Team Pits will be located.
4. For VEX IQ teams who pre-ordered for Tuesday, it will be a dinner delivery instead of lunch. Delivery time is still to be determined. Stay tuned for updates.

• One of our event sponsors, A3 Association for Advancing Automation, will be sponsoring a new award category for High School teams, the A3 Robot Safety Award.

• We have worked with this sponsor to ensure the submission process and judging process for this award closely aligns with current judging practices.

• Please see the attached PDF document that outlines key factors of the award and the correlation to industry standards.

• Page 2 of the document is the rubric that will be used by our judges to score the criteria of the award.

• Page 3 of the document is the Submission Form for your teams to complete if they choose to participate and be eligible for the award.

• Page 4 - Follow the instructions on the PDF to upload the Submission Form directly to A3 judges by Wednesday, March 12th. This form does NOT need to be submitted with their digital notebook.

• This PDF document will also be posted on our Robot Events page in the Judging and Documents sections.

• The A3 Robot Safety Award is separate from and in addition to the standard awards outlined in the Judge Guide.

Open the A3 Safety Award Packet below! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

All State Championship events will be streamed on our

Ohio VEX Robotics YouTube Channel!

Follow and share within Ohio's VEX Robotics community!

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1371319947021177

Matlack Photo will be taking pictures each day. Photos will be available online, where prints can be ordered or are free to download!

matlackphoto.com/ohiovex2025

Refer to the chart below to see the awards that will be given for each event and which awards correlate with a qualifying spot to VEX Worlds. These allocations are designated by the REC Foundation and are based on the percentage of registered teams in each Event Region over the last few seasons compared to total number of teams in the world in those same seasons, and on the capacity of VEX Worlds.

Please refer to the Qualifying Criteria for VIQRC, VRC, and VEX U Events for complete details.

Fine Designs, the official vendor of the VEX World Championship, will be on-site offering a variety of apparel options.

We will have maps for you with your registration packet to help you navigate the museum, but here are a few graphics to help give you some idea of the layout of the event.

1. Upon arrival, all teams and spectators must enter through the museum's Main Entrance, indicated on the map below with a red star.

2. Everyone must go through security and may be screened with a metal detector upon entry. In addition all bags, toolboxes, robot boxes are subject to search and may be placed through an X-Ray machine. The museum has been made aware of the type of equipment & tools that our teams will be bringing, so we are hopeful that this will be a quick & easy process!

From one coach to another, I would advise teams to make sure their equipment boxes are neatly organized and easy to search!

3. Teams will proceed to the left, past the museum gift shop to Kettering Hall, which is the main corridor through Building 1 and is marked with a yellow star on the map below. Here you will find our Team Registration tables and Volunteer Check-In.

4. Once checked in, just follow the main walkway through the museum (the thick gray line through the middle of the map).

5. Building 2 will include our main competition area, Skills, and Fine Designs. Bleacher seating will be available, but space will be limited. We encourage parents and spectators to enjoy the museum in between matches!

6. Building 3 will include Pit Areas A, B, and C, practice fields, a designated area for judges interviews, and the designated lunch area.

7. We will not be using Building 4 for any part of our competition, but we encourage teams to take a walk when they have a moment to see the Missile Gallery, the Presidential Gallery, and the Research & Development Gallery. There is some really cool stuff to see there!

⬇️⬇️⬇️

Buses should continue down past the green square in the image above and park down at the end of that parking lot.

We look forward to seeing everyone soon! Good luck!

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Kristi Matlack, VEX IQ Event Partner

kmatlack@nu-district.org

Mark Robinson, VRC Event Partner

mrobinson@mytririvers.org

Rob Smith, Event Partner

rob_smith@vex.com