UPDATE-ON TUESDAY, FEB. 28, TEAM CLASSIFIED WAS ALSO INVITED TO COMPETE AT FTC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS!

For the third time in the last four years Mount Vernon High School will be sending a Robotics team to the FTC World Championships. On Saturday at the Iowa-FTC tournament, team #458, Activate Go Initiative!, was the captain of the winning alliance team and, therefore, was one of two teams that qualified (out of 32 competing). Team 458 also won a major award, the PTC Design Award, based on their computer assisted drafting of their robot. They were also nominated for two other awards: the Think Award, based primarily on their engineering notebook, and the Inspire Award. The Inspire Award is the highest award given and they placed third. They will be departing for St. Louis on the morning of April 25 to compete with 130 other teams who also qualified out of the over 2,000 teams registered from many nations.

Mount Vernon’s other team competing, Team #3549, Classified, also had a successful day and came very close to being the second team that qualified for the World Championships. Their alliance team lost in the finals (to a team that included team 458. Team 3549 won the Think Award and were nominate for the Motivate Award, based on their spirit. They were 2nd place in the Inspire Award. If they had placed first, they would have earned an automatic bid to the World Championships.

Team members:

Team 458:
Paul Chihak, Robert Banwart, Mildred Chihak, Nicholas Liberko, Macon M., Alex White, Matt Peiffer, Hunter Lind.

Team 3549:
Aubrey Lyon, Ashley Neal, Drew Keller, Kate Baumler, Gage Lochner, Catie Sheehy, Sara Lyon, Renny Klein, Halima Chambo.