How the club started
VexKan Robotics Club was founded in 2023 by Eli Seeliger and a group of enthusiasts who had started experimenting with robotics. It has grown to around 20 students across grades 3–12.
Our mission
Make STEM education accessible and inspiring for all students by providing free robotics support, mentorship, and learning opportunities that foster creativity, problem-solving, teamwork, and confidence.
How the club actually looks
Most of the club happens around a build table and a practice field, long before anyone gets to a competition venue. Clubbers build the robot, break it, and build it again.
How we run the club
Open to everyone
What we work out gets written down and left open, so a team we have never met can use it.
Hands on the parts
Clubbers build, program and test the robot themselves. We coach; we don't build it for them.
Write it down
Every team keeps an Engineering Logbook, because explaining a decision is as much of the work as making it.
Compete, and keep going
Losing a match is a design brief. Teams iterate through a season rather than starting over.
At the World Championship
Three of the club's teams have competed at the VEX Robotics World Championship. This is what that week looks like from the floor.
The rest of that week
Almost none of a World Championship is spent on a field. It is the pit, the walk between halls, and whatever there is to eat.
Student-founded, student-run
Eli Seeliger
Founder
Started VexKan in 2023 after getting into robotics, and has run the club ever since. Competes in VEX alongside coaching, most recently with team 16688A.
VexKan is coached and organised by students who compete themselves, which is why the club teaches the way it does: everything here was learned at a competition first.
Use what we have written
The guides, calculators and notebook templates are open to any team, in our club or not. That is the part of this we are most glad to hand over.