On the weekend of March 11, The LigerBots competed at the New England Rhode Island Event, an official district event where teams can qualify for the New England District Championships. We competed alongside thirty other teams from across the district.

The Rhode Island Competition was a phenomenal experience! We were thrilled to watch our robot, Atlas, in action, as it dodged and weaved through defenders to score game pieces on the grid. 

In total, we had forty students and ten coaches attend the event. After competing in twelve qualifying rounds requiring some on the spot repairs in between matches, we were picked into the third seeded alliance and made it to the semi-finals. Many thanks to our drive team, build team, scouts, and our Alliance Captain, team Morpheus, for helping us achieve this!

In addition, FIRST also awarded us the Team Sustainability award, for developing a sustainable recruiting, training and mentoring team environment that will last for years to come. In all, these accomplishments placed us 33rd out of 187 teams across the district. 

We also had impressive individual awards earned during the event. Kevin, the LigerBots’ co-Chief Technical Officer, was awarded the District Championship Dean’s List Semi-Finalist for his immaculate leadership.

Greer Swiston, a mentor who has served for eight years on the LigerBots, was nominated as a finalist for the Woodie Flowers Award, acknowledging her long-time dedication to the team.

Our next competition will be on the weekend of March 24 to 26! The event will be held in Revere High School in Revere, MA. Come see us compete! More information here. 

In the coming weeks, we are looking forward to exhibiting our robot at Newton North High School Puzzle Day on March 15 and also running several STEAM activities for elementary school students at Cabot Schools Invention Invasion on March 16.

As always, we’d like to acknowledge our sponsors: Rotary Club of Newton, Honda Village, Teradyne, PTC, Village Bank, Raytheon Missiles & Defense, Newton Schools Foundation, Newton Public Schools, Rockwell Automation, as well as the Cao, Chaudhury Karim, Franklin, King, Preston, Saitz, Sangiolio, Wang Ji, Schwartz, Nedeljkovic, and Housman Family. Your support is greatly appreciated!