January 8, 2024 By Kathy Puleo, Director of Outreach Mentor NDA Academy Robotics
After months of planning, coding, building, documenting, baking, marketing, and outreach, the Notre Dame Academy Robotics Team competed in the First Tech Challenge at Needham High School on December 9, 2023. The results were the reward for all the hard work they did leading up to the competition.
Arriving early to set up and have the robot inspected and approved, team members were clearly excited to begin the day. After demonstrating that the robot met the specifications for FTC competition, the team transitioned into the judging portion. An important aspect of the competition involves time spent with the judges detailing the efforts made to be prepared and to share what the team had experienced since September. The team was given 5 minutes to explain their personal contributions to building and programming the robot, documenting progress each meeting, writing the portfolio and engineering notebook, as well as marketing and community outreach.
After six qualifying rounds for each team, Notre Dame had done well enough to move to the alliance rounds. The team demonstrated proficiency in many robotics feats and earned themselves fifth place overall!
Motivated by this impressive finish the team is working to improve in time for their upcoming competition at Lexington High School on January 13, 2024.
