Trophies at a VEX IQ event come in three families — and each one honors a different kind of excellence.
The three award families
- Teamwork awards — earned on the field: the Teamwork Champions are the finals-winning alliance, with rankings built across the qualification matches.
- Robot Skills awards — earned on the skills field: the best combined driver + autonomous scores, just your team against the clock.
- Judged awards — earned in the interview room: judges pair the engineering notebook with team interviews to honor design process, ingenuity, and sportsmanship. These include the most prestigious awards in VEX — the ones that celebrate the journey, not just the scoreboard.
One team can win in multiple families in one day — and the quiet team with a modest robot and a magnificent notebook regularly out-awards the flashy one.
How teams advance
Qualification criteria are defined by Global Robotics — the authoritative version is their Event Qualifying Criteria. The shape:
- Judged and performance awards at qualifying events carry championship invitations (like the Nebraska State Championship).
- Robot Skills standings are the other path: championships fill spots from the skills rankings. Award-based invitations are issued first, and a skills run is never an automatic ticket — where you rank is what decides it.
- Leagues and Signature Events can carry their own advancement.
In Nebraska specifically, skills is the path most teams take — the majority of teams at our State Championship got there on their skills scores. So the practical advice: compete in the matches, take the notebook seriously, and above all get your skills runs in at every event — see skills challenges.