SSA First Tech Challenge Team Made Their Mark in State FTC Contest

The FIRST tech Challenge (FTC) robotics state tournament took place at Carl Hayden High School on Saturday, February 28th.  FIRST stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" and is the organization responsible for inspiring thousands of young minds across America in science, engineering, and technology.  Dean Kamen (the founder) has initiated four different robotics competitions for various age and experience levels.  They are Junior First Lego League (JFLL), FIRST Lego League (FLL), First Tech Challenge (FTC), and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC).

 FIRST's website describes the FTC challenge: "The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is a mid-level robotics competition for high-school students. It offers the traditional challenge of a FIRST Robotics Competition but with a more accessible and affordable robotics kit.  The ultimate goal of FTC is to reach more young people with a lower-cost, more accessible opportunity to discover the excitement and rewards of science, technology, and engineering".

Sonoran Science Academy (SSA) Tucson has embraced this organization's mission wholeheartedly and has initiated all four of these programs at its northwest Tucson campus.  SSA's mission is to provide college preparation for students to achieve success in the high-tech community of the new millennium through a science and mathematics instructional program that includes high educational standards, a liberal arts foundation and well-rounded academic excellence.  The FTC competitions are actually geared toward high school aged students, but SSA-Tucson raised the bar this year by having its FTC club team consist of 5 8^th graders and 5 9th graders compete against all high school aged students from 18 schools in the state FTC Tournament in Phoenix.

This was the SSA's FTC team's rookie year.  Nevertheless, their season was marked by many outstanding accomplishments.  The students named the team RUST (Robots Undertake Serious Tasks), raised more than $4,000 toward club expenses, participated in the annual Rodeo Parade, presented to hundreds of students from around Tucson to get them excited about math, science, technology and engineering, spent a month building a tournament ready competition arena to host local games in the future, took a tour of the robotics facility at SPEWAR in San Diego, spent as a group more than 1100 hrs together designing, building and programming Rusty (the team robot) to be ready for the state tournament, were state semifinalists, and won the FTC 2009 Design Award   The team dedicated long nights and sleepovers at the school many a weekend because of their dedication to and celebration of their math, science, and engineering skills.

At the state tournament, the team played well and impressed the judges enough to win the FTC 2009 Design Award for this year's Face Off competition.  Rusty was designed simple, yet aesthetic and robust.  It also outperformed most of the competition.  The team was fabulous during the formal judging interview and the numerous unannounced visits by judges impressed with the team.  During these interviews, the students effectively described their team, the robot's design, construction, and programming.  They also submitted an engineering notebook that highlighted the team's and robot's journey throughout the year.  All of these aspects of their team earned them this award. In addition, they were semifinalists, but glad that they had lost to their biggest competitor and sister school SSA-Phoenix who ended up winning the state tournament with their alliance.  Overall, the two Sonoran Science Academy schools dominated the game. Congratulations to Joshua Sloane, Ostin Zarse, Kurt Korionoff, Ian Lennon, Joey DeGrandchamp, Vlad Kovalsky, Manny Mello, Kim Wang, Kelly Koch, and Albert Camberos and their coach Robert Hobbins to a great end of their season, but also to the start of a new found relationship with science, math, and technology.

Some student testimonials:

"FTC was a good opportunity to learn more about teamwork, communication, engineering, and how to solve problems quickly" – Ostin Zarse

"FTC has showed me how much fun robotics is and has made me more interested in it" -Josh Sloane

"I learned in FTC that there can be very simple solutions to very complex problems" - Vlad Kovalsky