Alongside the teamwork matches, every one of our local events runs a skills field — and for Nebraska teams it's a primary route to the State Championship, not a side attraction.
The two kinds of skills runs
- Driver Skills — your drivers, your robot, the field to yourselves. Score as many points as you can, no partner team.
- Autonomous Coding Skills — same idea, but your robot runs entirely on its program. No driving allowed.
Your best scores combine into your team's skills ranking. It's just your team against the clock, which makes skills the purest test of your robot — and your code.
Why bother?
- In Nebraska, skills is how most teams reach State. This is the one to internalize: the majority of teams at our State Championship qualified on their skills scores. Skills results feed the official World Skills Standings, and championship events fill spots from those standings — here, that's the path most teams actually take. Running skills isn't an automatic invitation (where you rank is what matters), but skipping skills means giving up the most common route to State.
- It's the best practice there is. A full field, real match conditions, no pressure from a partner match.
- Autonomous is where the awards hide. Far fewer teams run serious autonomous skills — if your programmers put in the work, your team stands out fast.
The skills-to-standings mechanism is defined by VEX and Global Robotics; the "most Nebraska teams qualify this way" picture is ours, from running the state's events.
How to do it at our events
The skills field runs through the day at every local event we host. Swing by between your matches and get your runs in — the volunteers at the skills field will get you queued up. Don't wait until the end of the day, when everyone else remembers it exists too.
Ask your coach how many runs your event allows, then use them all. A skills run you don't take is a score of zero.