Josie Vilkas of Wayne joined the Rebel Robotics team three years ago, and "back then you could have never convinced me that I would be part of something so incredible."
The team includes seven members - Caleb Kitt and Noah Edwards, who will both be seniors at Columbus High School this fall; Zachary Foecking, who will be a senior and Emmett Haake, who will be a freshman in college from Norfolk Catholic High School; Braden Jensen and Nicholas Miller, who are both from Norfolk, home-schooled and will be seniors and Josie, who is home-schooled and will be a senior.
When she first came into the program, Josie really just expected to be learning mechanical and technological skills and never expected to be gaining skills in all fields from improvisation to business to graphic design.
"Robotics is one of the most beneficial things I have ever been a part of. Throughout my time on the team, we have been able to inspire and spread STEM and robotics programs throughout Nebraska," Josie said.
The team usually gets together once a week for a couple hours. Before taking part in the World Championship they met more often and had online zoom conversations.
The road to the World Championship included a qualifiers' event and state competition. Teams need to earn top awards at these competitions before moving on.
At the qualifying event, Rebel Robotics earned the Inspire Award and at state competition, the team qualified for the world competition by being Inspire second place and the alliance partner of the winning team.
This year, all of the pieces fell into place. For years, the team has been working on making robotics successful in Nebraska, and they saw their hard work begin to pay off as they were finally able to have the robotics competition in Nebraska, instead of Iowa.
"We took it upon ourselves this year to be advocates for FIRST Tech Challenge in Nebraska and met with countless business leaders, politicians, and educators to gain their support for the program. This passion and inspiration was what won us the World Championship in Houston, Texas," Josie said.
During the three years that Josie has been on the team, Rebel Robotics has qualified for the World Championship. Each year the team went and performed well, but never were able to fully achieve the multi-year goal of winning the top award, the Inspire Award.
The Inspire Award recognizes a team who excels in all areas – robot games, programming, robot design, presentations, interviews, outreach, mentorship, teamwork, and documentation of their season. In addition, the Inspire Award is given to the team who is a strong ambassador for FIRST and embodies the key principles of Gracious Professionalism and coopertition (cooperative competition).
"When we won the Inspire Award at the World Championship it was definitely a surreal experience. We were up against these teams of 30+ kids, and yet our seven-person team from small towns across Nebraska was chosen for the award. We’ve been working for this for years, and it always has felt like a dream that would never really be reality, so being able to stand on that stage knowing that all of our efforts were worth it was incredible. Our name is going to be in the Hall of Fame in the Championship building, standing as a physical reminder of our accomplishments and securing our legacy," Josie said.
Because of the team's win, they have been chosen to represent the United States of America at the FIRST Global competition in Panama City, Panama in October 2025.
This is an Olympic-style competition with a whole new game and set of rules. In addition to the competition, the team also is going to create innovative solutions to tackle threats to biodiversity as a part of this competition.
"I am not only excited for the new competition, but more importantly I am excited to show kids in Nebraska what they can achieve with this program. It is an incredible gift we’ve been given, and I want to utilize it to spark kids to join FTC in Nebraska. Representing the entire United States as a team from Nebraska is a huge honor, and a really cool opportunity to inspire kids in our state," Josie said.
