SALT LAKE CITY —The JudgeMent Call Robotics Team 5933 from Judge Memorial Catholic High School competed in the FIRST Robotics World Championships, held in Houston April 17-21, achieving a record of seven wins and three losses.
The robotics team is comprised of 27 students from grades 9 to 12, almost evenly split between girls and boys. This marked the team’s fourth competition year.
The road to the world championship started last summer, when the students started fundraising and preparing for competition.
“We spend the summer months meeting, planning for the next year, fundraising money and doing community outreach,” said Erica Strand, one of the team members. “Then in the fall we concentrate on fundraising, as the team is completely student-run and sponsor-funded.”
In January the team was given a game and challenge in which they had about six weeks to build and complete their robot.
The competition season started in March, so “it really is a year-round program,” said Parker Cattan, another team member.
The JudgeMent Call team placed 14th in the qualifications for the San Diego FIRST Robotics Competition, held March 7-10. At the tournament itself, the team placed eighth and received the Creativity Award for ingenuity and engineering.
A few weeks later, during the March 28-30 Utah regional tournament, the JudgeMent Call team placed third overall. They also received the Industrial Design Award and were named a captain of the 2nd ranked alliance.
Moving on to the world championships, the Bulldogs team finished 12th in the Galileo division at the FIRST Robotics Competition.
“FIRST Robotics Competition is a science, technology, engineering, and math program for a team of 10 to 50 members in 9th-12th grades,” the tournament’s web page states, adding that the teams must design and build a robot using a standard parts kit, then use “a common set of rules to play a sophisticated field game.”
This year, the JudgeMent Call Robotics Team 5933 built a robot they called Lieutenant Ripley. The team received a 120-page game manual, which they read, “and from there we go through all the ideas the team has to accomplish the goals the manual lays out for us,” Cattan said.
For the members of the team, participating in competitions means more than taking awards.
“The school was proud of us, but mostly it helped to get the robotics team name out there, let the student body know what we do and how we do it, and encourage others to join the team for next year,” Strand said. “It means a lot to know that we are improving STEM education and Judge, and we hope our success draws more people into STEM to learn more from programs like this one.”
The robotics competition “is a special opportunity for our students to apply the skills they learn in the classroom and allow them to grow in many different ways,” said Sonja McKown, Judge Memorial’s instructional technology coach and the robotics team’s mentor. “The robotics program prepares our kids for the future and teaches them how to work together to solve a problem.”
The JudgeMent Call Robotics team is funded by donations and sponsorships; to compete as they do, they must raise about $40,000 per year. For information on the team, visit https://jmrobotics5933.wordpress.com.
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