Placing their robots on a 4-by-8-foot rectangular field, two duos have 60 seconds to work together to score as many points as possible.

The object of the teamwork challenge is to attain the highest score by scoring hubs in building zones, removing hubs from the hanging structure and hanging robots at the end of the match.

The two building zones are in the corners of the field, while the middle contains a hanging structure. There are 15 hubs and two bonus hubs available to be scored in the building zones and one parking zone in the middle of the field.

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Duos also can compete in the robot skills challenge, where one robot takes the field to score as many points as possible under driver control, or the programming skills challenge, where a robot scores autonomously without any driver inputs.

It’s all about taking it to the Next Level, which is this year’s game in the VEX IQ robotics competition.

On Saturday at Immanuel Lutheran School in Seymour, elementary and middle school students had a final opportunity to qualify for the state competition on March 9 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Teams from schools as close as Jackson, Jennings and Scott counties and as far away as the Indianapolis area competed. The 90 teams participating made it the largest of the season, said Dallas Goecker, coach of the Immanuel robotics team.

He said it was great seeing both gymnasiums abuzz with students and coaches going back and forth between the camp and competition areas and parents and other family members watching all of the action.

“I love all of the kids’ first time trying this, doing this, trying something different,” Goecker said. “They try, they have some success, they have some failures and they redo it and try again. It’s all about accomplishing things and seeing ‘This is what I made, this is what I can do’ and not being afraid to fail. ‘I tried this. It didn’t work. It’s not the end of the world. Go back and try it again.’”

For some of the students, they will be going to Lucas Oil Stadium for the second year in a row. For others, it will be their first time on the big stage.

“You’re out there on the field. You’re onstage in front of a very large audience,” Goecker said. “It’s very cool. It’s a big deal.”

In the elementary division of Saturday’s tournament, the 47274C team of Alex Foster and Wesley Miller from Seymour-Redding Elementary School won the teamwork champion award, which qualifies them for state. The duo, however, already had earned a bid to state during their first tournament of the season Nov. 10.

Cortland Elementary School’s B team of fifth-graders Ryder Clark, Sawyer Smith, Isaac Rust and Alex Bryant qualified for state by scoring a total of 19 points in the driving and programming skills challenges during their last attempt of the day Saturday. It will be Clark and Rust’s second trip to the state finals.

Other local state qualifiers are Leo Holle and Gavin Burnside of 47274B and Anna Obermeyer and Paulton Rennekamp of 47274E, both from Redding, and Sam Dyer and Elijah Tempest of 520E and Daniel Bode, Sam Parisi and Gavin Wessel of 520K, both from Immanuel.

In the middle school division, Brownstown Central’s Madison Edwards and Bryce Reaser of 98098J won the excellence award and Eli Reynolds, Elix Preston and Caleb Reynolds of 98098B won the design award, while Immanuel’s Ethan Alberring, Myles Chandler and Trevor Goecker of 520N won the teamwork champion award.

Other local teams qualifying for state are Cody Burnside and Holden Tovey of 98098C and Jayse Davis and Landon Hehman of 98098A, both from Brownstown, and Benjamin Neawedde and Layla Jones of 520X from Immanuel.

This is just the second year of robotics at Redding, so coach Kathy Moffett is happy to have two teams making it to state.

“I like how they have to work with the other teams from other schools, so they are actually making so many other friends and acquaintances and trying to see what other schools are doing,” she said.

“They have to learn how to do strategy with other teams and what’s going to work for them and who can high hang, who can do the push,” she said of this year’s game. “Learning to work with other teams who might be a competitor otherwise, they are learning to be friends and work together, and I think that’s cool.”

She said it was exciting to see Miller and Foster qualify for state during the season-opening tournament at Immanuel.

“That was so much fun for them to qualify right away, right out of the bat,” she said.

The two boys have known each other for a while, and that paid dividends.

“We’ve been friends for quite a while,” said Foster, a fourth-grader. “We play Fortnite together practically every day. We communicate well.”

Miller, a fifth-grader, said he qualified for state last year but wasn’t able to go. This year, he’s not going to miss it.

“I want to see what other people have done all season, see how they built (their robots),” he said.

Immanuel duo Lauren Bode, a fifth-grader, and Lane Kleber, a fourth-grader, competed Saturday but also had qualified for state earlier this season.

Bode said one of their strengths with the Next Level game is having a variety of strategies, and Kleber said they have progressed in their skills.

“We got better at pushing (hubs) that day,” Kleber said of the earlier tournament. “Before that day, we were only able to push two. Now, we’re able to push four.”

The two will continue to combine their building and programming skills to have success at state.

“I’m really looking forward to getting teams that are really good,” Bode said.

“I want to see how good people are,” Kleber said.

Also qualifying for state at an earlier tournament are Crothersville seventh-graders Nolan Brandenburg and Jacob Bowman. They qualified for state earlier in the season at Scottsburg and won a tournament there the following weekend. The school only had one tournament last school year, so this is the first full season of robotics at Crothersville.

Brownstown Central Middle School will have six of its nine teams competing at state.