In the 8th grade, I started my own independent team, "HiTek", with a corporate sponsor and the help of my parents. It was a very challenging year since we didn’t know what needed to be done for a VEX team. At the beginning of the season, I competed in 5 tournaments and didn’t win many awards. Then for the remainder of the season, HiTek was Tournament Champions in 3 out of 4 tournaments (lost in the finals match in one of the tournaments)! I qualified for the California State Middle School Championships and placed 1st place in Skills, which qualified for the 2017 VEX World Championships where I won the Amaze award and was 10th place in World Skills Rankings. This was a very exciting year! I learned to build and program my robot and do everything on my own! With every new challenge each year, I get to build and program a new robot design!