Robocats Team 1699, the Bacon Academy Robotics team, has won gold at a regional competition, the 2011 Chesapeake Regional FIRST Robotics competition, which took place on March 18th and 19th.
The Colchester team’s Captain Steve Clark said that they were pitted against 60 high school teams from Washington and 11 other states to play this year’s game called Logo Motion. The chief goal of the competition was to provide inspiration to high school students to take up careers in innovations, engineering and science. The students had to design and construct robots, which had to compete in a rapid sport like game.
The Robocats had been sponsored by Dominion, a Power Company, and consists of 14 students from Bacon and also seven adult mentors with four junior mentors belonging to the FIRST Robotics student alumni. Clark was highly appreciative of the mentors and stated that without their guidance and help, the win would not have been possible. After a rocky start, however on the D-day i.e. 19th March, the robot worked perfectly without any hitches and Bacon captured the 27th place. An alliance was formed with the second place team from Philadelphia and Baltimore schools and the rest is history.
The alliance went on to win the best of the three final matches and took the winner’s spot in the tournament. Despite this, the Bacon was unable to participate in the World Championship as funds were not sufficient. However, they attended the Hartford Northeast Utilities FIRST Connecticut Regional competition, which would be taking place from March 31 to April 2.