The FIRST® Robotics Competition Finger Lakes Regional tournament event was held March 15 through 17 at Rochester Institute of Technology Gordon Field House. The competition drew more than 50 teams from around the world, including a team from China and one from Brazil. Like all the FIRST regional competitions, it is a stepping stone for teams trying to reach the FIRST World Championship competitions that will be held at the end of April in Detroit and Houston.
Working with adult mentors, FIRST Robotics Competition students have six weeks to design, build, program, and test their robots to meet the season’s engineering challenge. Once these young innovators build a robot, they compete in events for honors and recognition that reward design excellence, competitive play, sportsmanship, and high-impact partnerships between schools, businesses, and communities. This season features an arcade-themed floor game played in three-team alliances.
Team 340 – Greater Rochester Robotics from Churchville-Chili High School, Team 3015 – Ranger Robotics from Spencerport High School, and Cadet Robotics from Hilton High School all advanced to the FIRST® Championship, the world’s largest celebration of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for students, to be held April 25 through 28 in Detroit. During the 2018 season, approximately 3,650 FIRST Robotics Competition teams in 27 countries are competing to earn a championship spot.
Churchville-Chili’s Team 340 takes first place
After an exciting first place showing at the Central New York FIRST Robotics competition at SUNY Polytechnic earlier this month, Churchville-Chili’s Team 340 topped the field again at the 2018 Finger Lakes Regional. The 25-member team will be headed to the world championship in Detroit in April.
The team’s director, teacher Jason Rees, said, “Our team members plan ahead. They analyze the game, build on what they know and emphasize their strengths. We also owe a lot to our mentors: engineering students from RIT, and family members with and without engineering backgrounds. Together, we’ve made it to the world championships in all but two of the last 19 years.”
Spencerport’s Team 3015 wins Chairman’s Award
On St. Patrick’s Day 2018, Irish eyes were smiling on FIRST Team 3015, Ranger Robotics as they were awarded the prestigious FIRST Chairman’s Award at the completion of the 2018 Finger Lakes Regional competition.
According to the official FIRST web site, the Chairman’s Award is the most prestigious award at FIRST, honoring the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the purpose and goals of FIRST.
It was created to keep the central focus of FIRST Robotics Competition on the ultimate goal of transforming the culture in ways that will inspire greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology, as well as encouraging more of today’s youth to become scientists, engineers, and technologists.
This is the third time the team has won a Chairman’s award (2016, 2017), but the first time here at the local competition. “Winning here at the local Finger Lakes Regional is an amazing honor and shows just how hard these kids work all year,” said Nancy Mancuso, a Spencerport High School teacher and lead mentor for the Chairman’s effort. “This is a big win for the entire team and we could not be prouder of what they continue to accomplish.”
It was an amazing weekend of ups and downs on the competition field Friday, huge wins on Saturday in their two qualifying matches, a pick by the third-seed team to join their playoff alliance, the students overcoming a major equipment failure during the semi-finals, just missing the finals, but then finally at the end of a long day, the excitement of hearing some of the judges sing the Chairman’s announcement.
Hilton team wins Rookie All Star Award
Cadet Robotics, a FIRST Robotics Competition team of 16 high school students from Hilton High School and their mentors, received the Rookie All Star Award at the Finger Lakes Regional tournament and will move on to compete in Detroit.
To qualify for the Regional tournament, Cadet Robotics built two identical robots in the six weeks between January 6 and February 20. On February 20 the team bagged the competition robot and spent 25 hours over the next two weeks practicing driving and perfecting the programming of the robot at neighboring team Ranger Robotics’ practice field in Spencerport.
Cadet Robotics is a rookie team established by the Hilton High School Technology Department. The team has been meeting for the past year preparing for their first build season. “Cadet Robotics students are already giving back to the community that supports them by volunteering with the elementary school robotics clubs and demonstrating their robot at elementary school events,” said Advisor Stephanie Mattice.
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