Another winter snowstorm struck New Hampshire Saturday, but that couldn’t stop thousands of students from competing in the finals of the sixth annual Granite State Regional FIRST Robotics competition held at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester.
The event brings students and their mentors together in a two-day competition that emphasizes teamwork, innovation and strategy. Forty-eight high school teams from across New England participated in this year’s Granite State Regional, which was sponsored by BAE Systems.
The following local teams received awards:
• -Team 1058 from Londonderry High School was selected as the winner of this year’s Motorola Quality Award, celebrating machine robustness in concept and fabrication.
• -Team 811 from Bishop Guertin High School in Nashua was selected as the winner of this year’s Johnson & Johnson Sportsmanship Award, celebrating outstanding sportsmanship and gracious professionalism, both on and off the playing field.
• -The Rookie All-Star Award was presented to Team 2342, Greater Nashua Area High Schools, for their success in a unique design strategy. The team is made up of students in the Nashua area whose schools do not offer a robotics team. The team is made up of 12 students from eight different high schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Overall, the 2008 Granite State FIRST Regional Robotics winner were Team 121 from Middletown, Portsmouth, Tiverton, Mount Hope and North Kingstown, R.I.; Team 40 from Trinity High School in Manchester; and Team 134 from Pembroke Academy in Pembroke.
The most prestigious award, the Regional Chairman’s Award, was presented to Team 126 from Clinton (Mass.) High School for encouraging the best partnership effort among team participants and best exemplifying the true meaning of FIRST.
The teams received their challenge in January to design, develop and build a robot using common parts.
This year’s challenge – “FIRST Overdrive” – is played on a track with a fence dividing red and blue sides. The fence is intersected by an overpass representing the red and blue finish lines. Two, three-team alliances race around the track, scoring points by carrying or tossing balls with the robots they’ve created.
Local teams participating came from Nashua, Milford, Merrimack, Amherst, Hollis and Hudson.
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