CANFIELD — Robotics competitors from the tri-county area squeezed in a competition Wednesday evening at the Mahoning County Career and Technical Center before the weather got wicked and closed schools Thursday.

Walter Baber, an engineering instructor at the MCCTC who is one of the organizers of the Mahoning Valley VEX Robotics League, said the winter weather already has made it challenging to have competitions from Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties, with events postponed and some canceled.

“This was a qualifier night. It’s like NASCAR, where you do trial runs to earn a position. That is what the teams are doing. This is the fourth night we have held a qualifying round,” Baber said.

He said final local rounds are Feb. 17, which will determine which six teams move to elimination tournaments; three top teams then move to the state competition March 12 in Marion. A world final competition is held in Texas in April.

The league is for students in grades nine to 12.

“This is 100 percent student-driven. They design, build, program and test a robot to complete a challenge,” Baber said.

In this year’s challenge, the robots must pick up flat mobile containers and place them on a levitated platform at the sides of the competitive rings, requiring the containers to remain balanced on the platform to earn up to 40 points.

“They have two minutes to accomplish this and earn as many points as they can,” Baber said.

While VEX has been around for 13 years, the local events have been held for 10 years, Baber said.

“While the students learn about engineering and robotics, it is more about problem solving. They learn to solve the challenge and see what works and doesn’t work with the robots that they build and program. We want to see the students have a sense of accomplishment being able to do this on their own in getting the robots to move and solve the task,” Baber said.

A Trumbull County team was practicing in a side room before being called to the competition.

“The challenge is to make sure we know what we are doing and to focus on solving the task. It can be very difficult at times to get the task done but it really prepares us to be ready with our robot,” team member Sarah Howard, a junior from Warren, said.

“It’s nice that you do not have to be an engineering student to be part of this. It is open to any student who wants to give it a try and finds it interesting,” Abby Starcher, a junior from Lakeview, said.

A Mahoning County team also was preparing its robot for competition.

“This year has been tough for a team that just started this school year,” Boardman junior Lucas Beeman said.

He said he is a computer programmer and likes working with the VEX robotics programming system.

Team member Camelia Blackmon, a junior from Jackson-Milton, said the team has many new freshman members,

“It can be frustrating when there is a major failure with the robot. There are four motors in the bottom of the robot. We tried a motor once in the robot at a competition and found out one of the motors was corrupted,” Blackmon said.

Nick Moliterno of Austintown, whose daughter, freshman Madeline Moliterno, is taking part on a team, said this is his fifth year of having a child in robotics with his son, who graduated, previously taking part.

“They like the problem-solving and the competition. You can see how the students are able to improve their robots from when they first began to now at the competitions. Being good at problem solving is the most helpful with the competition,” Moliterno said.

Terri Fleming, an engineering instructor at Trumbull Career and Technical Center, said she has a great group of students. She said in addition to engineering students, 25 kids on the team are from other prorgams, such as biomed, coding and landscaping.

“This is open to any student in any program who wants to take part. It is a nice mix of students from different areas. That is what makes it nice for the teams,” Fleming said.

She said in the next planned events, students will be competing with drones.