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FIRST Robotics Team Prepares for 2016 Challenge

1/11/2016

On Saturday morning, a group of 30 Collegiate Middle and Upper School students, faculty and parents met in the Sharp Academic Commons to tune in to the worldwide announcement of the 2016 FIRST Robotics Team competition game called FIRST STRONGHOLD.

This year, more than 3,000 teams comprised of 78,000+ students from around the world will compete to win the annual FIRST Robotics event. Between now and Feb. 23 at midnight (six weeks), the Collegiate team will be spending every available hour designing and building their robot (and a spare), programming it to make all the right moves required by this year's Medieval-themed game and testing it. Their team coaches are Dan Bartels, our Middle/Upper School STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) coordinator, and Greg Sesny, Upper School science teacher.

After watching the big announcement on Saturday morning, students split into groups and spent several hours reading the rules for the game. The first step in the process is to understand the game and how points are scored.

"If the kickoff for our rookie year is any indication, we are going to have an outstanding team," says Mr. Bartels. "Of the many kickoffs I’ve attended for rookie teams, I’ve never seen the support, enthusiasm and organization that we had here. As far as the game goes, it’s the most complex of the 12 years that I’ve been involved."

You can watch the game reveal video here to see an animated version of what this year's challenge is about.

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