Middle School Robotics & Upper School Volunteer Awarded
February 15, 2024
The Middle School Robotics teams (Team 1448/The Force and Team 1449/The R2D2s) competed against 25 teams at the West Florida FIRST LEGO League Pinellas Qualifier on Saturday, January 20, which was hosted at Shorecrest.
This year teams were challenged to develop a way to increase participation or engagement in their hobbies and interests through the use of technology and the arts – as well as build and program a competitive robot to complete missions on the Masterpiece field. Team 1448 elected to tackle the problem of motion sickness by designing Speed-E-Relief, a specialized wristband that sends neuro-transductive pulses to the median nerve to reduce nausea. Team 1449 developed HistoGo, a web-based gaming application that used AR elements to make visiting historical sites more engaging and interesting.
Team 1448 was awarded an Engineering Excellence Award. This award is given to the team that competes at a high level in all areas of FIRST - robot, project, and Core Values. Team 1449 won the award for Robot Design for using outstanding principles and solid engineering practices to develop a robot that is mechanically sound, durable, and efficient. Both teams earned ‘Golden Tickets’ to attend the regional tournament in Bradenton on February 10.
Regionals was a busy day for both teams with an early departure from Shorecrest at 6am. After the initial judging in which teams have just 30 minutes to present their robot and project and answer questions from judges, both teams received callbacks for additional time with the judges - Team 1448 for Innovative Project and Team 1449 for both Innovative Project and Robot. While both teams ended their season on Saturday, Team 1449 was thrilled to be awarded 1st Place for Robot Design out of the 36 teams present.
A special note of thanks to the many Shorecrest Upper School robotics students who volunteered at both tournaments as mentors, judges, referees, and field resetters. They spent a combined 175 hours supporting their Middle School peers over the last few weekends.
Quincy Ascyue ‘27, Alex Estremera ‘26, Chris Every ‘27, Will Farley ‘27, Carson Granese ‘25, Gaston Grehan-Savona ‘26, Noah Jaffee ‘25, Patrick Meng ‘25, Lili Scoby ‘25 and Alexis Valance ‘25.
Additionally, Alexis Valance ‘25 was recognized by the West Florida FIRST Region with a Volunteer of the Year award!
