BRACEBRIDGE, ON-The Bracebridge robotics team has been crowned one of the champions of the FIRST Robotics Competition.
The team from Bracebridge Muskoka Lakes (BML) Secondary School was accompanied by other robotics groups from Mississauga and Toronto during last weekend’s competition in Barrie as they were announced champions of the event.
This was BML’s fifth competition and its members are made up of three Grade 10 students and three Grade 11 students.
Technology teacher at BML Eyan Wheatley said that the group learned important lessons about perseverance and teamwork at the competition as they had two months to build a custom 140-pound robot to compete in various activities.
Part of the competition was establishing alliances with other teams to demonstrate teamwork and BML decided to pair up with the schools from Mississauga and Toronto.
Wheatley said that the final match when they were hanging their robot from a teetering bar, was able to win them the highest round score, “That’s over 300 pounds of machines attaching and hoisting themselves up on a teetering bar. Our small and relatively inexperienced team directly contributed more than 20 percent of the alliance total score. Pretty amazing when playing with such high-calibre teams.”
FIRST (for inspiration and recognition of science and technology) is an international non-profit organization that is designed to inspire students to pursue studies and careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).
The BML team is set to compete at Nippissing University in North Bay from March 27th to the 29th and aims to earn enough points to advance to the provincial championships in Mississauga in April.
