Balls were flying Monday and Tuesday at the Vicksburg Convention Center, but it wasn’t for a typical sports competition.

Elementary, middle school and high school students from around the state convened in Vicksburg for the VEX Robotics Mississippi State Championship, coordinator Stacy Addy said.

The event drew 80 teams from across the state, bringing an estimated 1,000 people to the River City.

“In the state of Mississippi we have engineering and robotics classes, STEM classes, gifted classes, Boy Scouts, 4H and all of them are working with robotics,” Addy said. “The teams qualify to come here to the state championship, and if they win here, they’ll go on to compete at the world championship.”

Most of the Vicksburg robotics teams compete in a different brand of robotics competitions, and none of the teams represented at the competition were from Vicksburg or Warren County. Addy said she’s not aware of any VEX teams in the Vicksburg area.

“We chose Vicksburg because it was more centrally located in the state,” she said. “We like the convention center, and the cost was very affordable.”

Vicksburg Convention Center executive director Annette Kirklin said she and her staff were thrilled to have the group, and they’re already looking to book for 2017.

“When they put together our Putting on the Ritz for meeting planners, it incorporated having things planned here, and this is one of those results,” she said. “We’re getting more and more events from the Mississippi Department of Education and that event stems from that.”

Kirklin said it’s always great to have people come from all over the state and for them to be impressed by the Vicksburg Convention Center.

“It is so important for us to show groups what Vicksburg has to offer,” she said. “They are able to utilize our facility in all our many offerings, stay in our hotels, enjoy a taste of Vicksburg and take advantage of our motor coach.”

The Mississippi State Championship is one of a series of VEX IQ Challenges and VEX Robotics Competitions taking place internationally throughout the year.

VEX Robotics is a competitive robotics program for elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges, with more than 12,000 teams from over 30 countries that participate in more than 1,000 competitions worldwide.