First Year.
Fifth Grade.
Worlds Bound.

Challenger November is a VEX IQ Elementary Science Division robotics team based in Goddard, Kansas. They are made up of five 5th-grade competitors competing in their very first season under Coach Doug Mann.

In a sport where experience compounds season over season, first-year teams rarely make headlines. And they didn't. At least, not at first. Equipment failures derailed their start. By mid-season they sat near the bottom of their district. It was the kind of hole most teams never climb out of. Determined to succeed, they emerged with a competitive fire and began building, iterating, coding, and documenting. Each tournament a step forward. By the time they arrived at the 2025–2026 Kansas VEX IQ Elementary School State Championship, they were a different team than the one that opened the season. They pushed to within one rank of competing in finals. They came within a single point of the top skills award. Yet, they stayed composed. They kept up their sportsmanship. The judges saw what everyone in the room could feel, and Challenger November took home a World's Qualifier Design Award.

That award, one the most prestigious recognition in VEX IQ competition, is given to the team whose engineering notebook and design process best reflect the full spirit of engineering. It earned them a qualification to the 2026 VEX Robotics World Championship in St. Louis, Missouri. No 5th-grade team from the Goddard USD school district had ever made it that far.

That's their story. And it's just the beginning.