Douglas, Ryan and Gwyneth in a match against friends the Robovines 6955 and Geared Up 6347
Front Row Kneeling: Timothy Ha and Benjamin Marks; Back Row: Douglas Hotvedt, Gwyneth LaMarche, Daniel Michaels, Aidan Uvanni and Ryan Payne.
(Jan. 2015) Last month the RoboSpartans FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team arrived home with the two top prizes from their first season tournament at Clarkson University on Saturday. The team Captained the Winning Alliance in the “Cascade Effect” challenge and won the top prize of the Inspire Award at the Northern New York/Potsdam FIRST Tech Challenge Championship.
The Inspire Award is given to the team that truly embodies the “challenge” of the FTC Program. The winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious Professionalism, both on and off the playing field.
The Winning Alliance Captain RoboSpartans won all but one robotics match all day with their robot named Leonidas. They were the only team to win all five qualifying matches. The fifth-season, year-round team, caught the judge’s attention with their global and local outreach and technological savvy achieved with more than half the their team as rookies FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
Saturday’s finish ensures the RoboSpartans a spot at the East Super Regional Championship at the University of Scranton in March 2015. The East Super Regional will feature the top 72 teams from Virginia to Maine.
At Clarkson University, the RoboSpartans were joined in their Winning Alliance by friends, the Robovines 6955 of Ballston Spa and Error404 7012 of Central Square. Opposing Alliance Captains, Geared Up 6347 of Rome, won the Control Award and placed 2nd for the Inspire Award. New Hartford neighbors, the Basementalists 7094, took home the prestigious Think Award for their documentation of engineering processes via their Engineering Notebook.
FIRST Tech Challenge teams compete in paired alliances in qualification matches followed by top ranking team finals. Trophies are award for robot performance as well as engineering, use of sensors, motivation and outreach. Team parents who formerly coached FIRST LEGO League teams now lead many of our area’s FIRST Tech Challenge teams, growing this high school level “sport of the mind” independent from schools. The recent growth of teams has helped spark a renewed interest by school districts to get involved in robotics and support their own teams.
Locally, SUNY Polytechnic Institute leads the way in assisting the local Consortium of FTC teams created by the RoboSpartans, known as CNY+. A long time FIRST LEGO League Championship site, SUNY Poly offers both practice major event space for local FTC teams. The recent Empire NY FTC Qualifier on Dec. 7 brought college staffers and students and local engineers together to host 22 teams from around New York State.
“FIRST offers a series of robotics programs reaching students ages 6 through 18. FIRST Tech Challenge is the fastest growing, offering junior high to high school students an opportunity to experience hands-on engineering design, building, programming and competition with peers. Locally, over a dozen engineers affiliated with the Mohawk Valley Engineers’ Executive Council have contributed to the success of FTC by offering time as volunteers for local events. Local businesses have backed local FIRST events and teams financially for over 3 years.
“We are pleased to have our community behind us in promoting robotics.” said Bob Payne, RoboSpartans Coach. “This year our team focused on helping local underserved communities and connecting area teams to their global counterparts.” Payne added “We recently helped start a FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Tech Challenge teams from Upstate Cerebral Palsy. Both teams competed in official FIRST events for the first time. Our FTC TEC Network is our Google® Community set up for FTC team members to share engineering and teamwork ideas with their peers from around the World.”
The basement-based RoboSpartans team consists of members from three area school districts: Whitesboro, Utica and New Hartford. The team, includes veterans Gwyneth LaMarche and Ryan Payne of New Hartford, and Aidan Uvanni of Deerfield. They are matched by the stellar performance of new teams members Timothy Ha of Utica and Douglas Hotvedt, Benjamin Marks and Daniel Michaels of New Hartford. The team operates under the not-for-profit status of fiscal agent and supporter, the Mohawk Valley Applied Technology Corporation of Utica.
Now that the RoboSpartans have won a Regional Championship, they will spend the remainder of their season perfecting their robot and fundraising to support their travel to the multi-day East Super Regional.