Create. Solve. Lead started as a 5th grade (2022-23) VEX IQ team, though we didn’t know it at the time. After that first season our school Vex Robotics club disbanded and we needed to find a new way to compete. Our team of six didn’t want to stop. So we started an independent team (Thanks parents!). We won our first award and we made it to the State Championship (2023-24)!
In the 2024-25 season we won our first Qualifier and numerous awards. After our second invitation to the State Championship we started thinking ahead. My sister and I were in first-year FTC teams too, but VEX IQ was much more accessible to students. However there weren’t many schools with VEX IQ teams or clubs in Sarasota county. We had to search the internet and other counties for advice and guidance in building our robots.
In the Spring of 2025 we were invited to demonstrate VEX IQ at the Sarasota County STEM Fair Showcase. It went really well. Kids really enjoyed watching our robots. However, we didn’t know what to tell them when they asked for more information. We could only direct them to the Vex website. As we talked to more students it became clear that kids were really interested in this. After we won the Suncoast Career Challenge, we realized we could do something about this.
My father always taught our team to treat the other teams as teammates, not opponents. As we got older, he encouraged us to mentor the younger teams. VEX IQ Competitions require a lot of planning because you’re thrown into random alliances. Every team is a potential ally, not enemy. With this philosophy we got a lot of experience working with new teams. So we asked my dad, how could we do that. And that’s when CSL started to form. With the help of a family friend we registered for a 501 (C)(3).
We reached out to several places, and Gulf Gate Library was the first to give us an opportunity to teach a class. We put together kits using the abundance of parts we’d gathered over the years, and made an introductory curriculum: four classes on basic, but important, robotics coding and engineering skills you would need to build a VEX IQ robot. The classes are for free.
All the classes filled on the first day. We receive a donation of 7 used laptops, however we only had four kits, and we wanted only two students per kit so that they could have real hands on learning. My 37818A teammates volunteered to help us teach the classes. The Library received great feedback and asked us to come again, so we did another series. It was a great first summer.
In the 2025-26 season we won a few more awards, including the top “Excellence” Award at the Eagle Challenge, and earned another invitation to the State Championship. We picked up a few more parts so that we can make 6 kits now, and plan to do back to back classes at the Library this summer so that we can reach more students.
If you’d like to support our endeavor to offer free robotics coding and engineering classes, please reach out to us. Our class sizes are limited by the number of kits we can prepare. Our classes are free for students 5th-9th grade. We’re also looking for partners to host the classes.
Create.Solve.Lead 