The 2024-25 VEX IQ season — Rapid Relay — is here, bringing fast-paced teamwork challenges and creative robot design to elementary and middle school students across Nebraska. Teams form alliances, design custom robots with the VEX IQ platform, and compete in 60-second matches where collaboration and strategy are everything.

About Rapid Relay

In Rapid Relay, student engineers work as alliance partners to navigate challenges and score points in quick, competitive matches. The game sharpens problem-solving, programming, and teamwork — exactly the STEM skills that serve students beyond the robotics field.

Four Steps to Get Started

1. Register Your Team

Register at RobotEvents.com. The team registration fee for the 2024-25 season was $200 per team. Organizations with more than six teams could apply for a Team Registration Fee Waiver.

Registration included a Welcome Kit and the season's Rapid Relay ball.

2. Learn the Game Rules

Teams needed to familiarize themselves with all three competition formats:

  • Teamwork Challenge — alliance matches
  • Programming Skills — autonomous
  • Robot Skills — driver-controlled

The Rapid Relay Game Manual was the authoritative source for all rules.

3. Register for Events

Nebraska VEX IQ events were listed on RobotEvents.com throughout the season. Event registration fees typically ranged from $40–$85 per team for qualifying events. Team season registration had to be completed before signing up for events.

4. Build Your Robot

VEX Robotics provided a range of resources to help teams get started:

  • Hero Bot: Swish — the official Hero Bot for the Rapid Relay season, with step-by-step build guides. A great starting point, especially for new teams.
  • Drive Team Training Course — the VEX IQ Rapid Relay training course for drive teams
  • VEX IQ Resource Library — tutorials, videos, and programming guides

gainingSTEAM Support

gainingSTEAM provides equipment, tournament administration, and community support for VEX IQ programs across Nebraska. For tournaments gainingSTEAM hosts or supports, tournament-hosting equipment (fields, electronics, tablets, displays) is provided.

New to robotics? Reach out — we're happy to help with a "Coach 101" introduction.