The LigerBots are going to the FRC World Championship!

After three great days cheering on our team at the New England District Championship at Boston University the LigerBots were excited to learn that we qualify for the World Championship in Detroit, April 25-28!

At the District Championship we built a reputation for quick and reliable delivery of Power Cubes to the Scale, and were ranked 17 out of 64 teams at the end of the qualifying matches.

We competed in the quarter finals on the fifth alliance along with alliance captain The Outliers from Portland Maine (FRC team 5687) and TJ (Squared) from Bridgewater, MA, (FRC team 88.) The LigerBots finished the event as the 24th ranked team in New England out of 209 teams.

At the event we had the chance to talk about our team with several VIPs. FIRST founding chairman and Chairman’s Award namesake John Abele stopped by our pit along with Mark Greenlaw, FIRST’s VP for Strategy and Impact, and AVID Technology, Inc. director Nancy Hawthorne. And, our own Newton South principal, Joel Stembridge, had a chat with several of our team members.

Two team-wide awards  won at District events, as well as our robot’s high ranking, propelled us to the World Championship. At the North Shore District Event the LigerBots won the Imagery Award for attractiveness in engineering and for outstanding integration of our robot and team appearance. At the Greater Boston District Event we won the Engineering Inspiration Award for our outstanding success in spreading STEM excitement. Coach Igor was a semi-finalist for the Woodie Flowers Award for excellent coaching, and CMO Doug was a semifinalist for the Dean’s List Award for outstanding student leadership. And, the team won the world-wide Safety Animation competition back in January, resulting in our safety animation video being shown at every FRC event this season.

The LigerBots are now known as a team with outstanding STEM outreach, enthusiastic FIRST promotion, and a dependable robot built by talented Newton students with help from dedicated volunteer mentors. We are well on the way to fulfilling our goal of being the leader of project-based learning in Newton.

Attending the FIRST World Championship is an excellent opportunity for the LigerBots to level up our team’s success in FIRST and Newton’s reputation in the world of STEM. In Detroit we will meet many people with similar passions and STEM positivity, and our team members will get to compete along with 400 high-ranked FRC teams from all over the world.

We could not have made this progress and had this opportunity without the help of our amazing team supporters. Thank you to you all!

Now we need to ask for even more help. Our trip to the World Championship will be a bit of a bank buster. Competition registration is $5000 with another $15,000 to pay for the bus (this year we can manage to get one) and that’s why the team is undertaking a major, short-term fundraising effort. We don’t get to go to the World Championship every year, and we want to make sure that every LigerBot who wants to come with us can make the trip.

If you’d like to help out, visit https://ligerbots.org/sponsor – or message us on Facebook or email [email protected] if you are a corporate sponsor.