About Us

2014 - 2015

The OHS VEX Robotics Club began in the fall of 2014 when the Sullivan family contacted Frederick County Public Schools about creating a robotics team for their son, Daniel, "Little D", to observe. The Sullivan family had recently been given the crushing news that their son, who was then three years old, was afflicted with Infantile Metachromatic Leukodystraphy and had a very limited time to live. The Sullivans created a bucket list for their son which included being involved with robots. When OHS was contacted, we immediately started a robotics club using the generous funding from the Sullivan family. With only three months to complete a robot for the competition in January (compared to the nine months other teams had), the OHS teams faced a difficult challenge. Despite this major obstacle, both teams entered robots in the competition (placing 42nd and 46th out of 52 teams), and one team even won the prestigious Judge's Award for special accomplishments.

2015 - 2016

The following year, OHS had two teams compete in Baltimore. Both teams performed much better than the previous year (placing 9th and 21st out of 34 teams) and went on to participate in the playoffs.

2016 - 2017

Our third year, we were able to obtain enough funding to have a third team.  We competed in Baltimore again where we took 29th, 45th and 53rd places out of 58 teams.  We again won the Judge's Award for overcoming challenges.

2017 - 2018

During the 2017 - 2018 season, we competed a little closer to home in Hagerstown, Maryland where we placed 13th, 17th and 29th out of 32 teams.  One of our teams was actually named a tournament finalist for the first time!

2018 - 2019

For the 2018 - 2019 season, we were able to support four teams!  We again competed in Hagerstown and placed 15th, 17th, 20th and 24th out of 35 teams.  

2019 - 2020

We added a fifth team for the 2019 - 2020 season!  During the competition in Hagerstown, we placed 17th through 30th out of 39 teams.  Most notably, we actually sent a team to the State Competition for the first time!  We continue to grow and improve each year!

2020 - 2021

We were not able to compete during the 2020 - 2021 season due to COVID restrictions.  

2021 - 2022

Several of our veteran team members graduated during this lag period and we had to go through a "rebuilding period" for the 2021 - 2022 season.  We decided to downsize slightly to four teams of four at this time due to our lack of experience.  Our success this year was relatively mixed - with our teams placing 4th, 20th, 38th and 42nd out of 43 teams.  Not a bad showing for overall inexperienced members.  

2022 - 2023

We bounced back during the 2022 - 2023 season by earning 8th, 10th, 11th and 15th spots in the Hagerstown competition among 23 teams.  Most impressive, however, is the fact that we had two teams qualify for the State Championship - an OHS first!

2023 - 2024

As we continue to gain more experience, we have learned to gauge our success differently.  During the 2023-2024 season, we entered three different qualifiers and had three of our four teams qualify for the State Championship!  At one of the qualifiers, one of our teams won the Skills award for the competition.  At the Championship, one of our teams made it to 8th place in the qualifiers and another made it to 9th in the skills competition.  We continue to grow and surpass the previous year's success each year!