Concord Academy robotics team takes first place in FIRST Tech Challenge

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PETOSKEY — Working on and programming a robot since October of 2021 recently paid off for one local school's robotics team.

The Concord Academy of Petoskey middle school FTC robotics team — the "Bot-O-Caps" — recently took first place overall in the FIRST Tech Challenge in Big Rapids on Friday and Saturday, May 6-7. 

"We worked every Monday since then and practiced coding and building the robot and making it autonomous," said team member Vander Whittaker. 

The team, according to Concord Academy's band teacher and robotics coach Paul DeSimone, had to work their way to the playoffs where only eight teams advance and move on to compete for first place. 

The majority of the competition took place on Saturday with a full day of competitions and qualifying matches before the team moved on into the final and elimination rounds that afternoon.

"We actually reached as high as second place in the qualifying matches but dropped to seventh because of some last minute things that happened," explained DeSimone. 

"Our teammate in that specific round didn't do too well," he said.

DeSimone added that because they ended up in seventh place for the qualifying rounds it was almost pre-determined they would lose against the top teams they had to compete against. However, the Bot-O-Caps were victorious and took home the first place award. 

"I think we ended up winning because we really understood the game," said one of the high school mentors Honor Slocum. 

"A lot of teams actually ended up getting penalties, which helped us win too," she said. 

The Bot-O-Caps ultimately faced off against 19 teams from around the state. The students said they ultimately won through teamwork.

"We had to communicate really well and work together with our team and the teams we would get paired with," said Whittaker. 

DeSimone also said this was the middle school robotic team's first competition. They were gearing up and getting ready for one in 2020 that ended up being canceled due to the pandemic. 

"This was our third competition overall and so our high school mentors have gone before but this was the first for our 7th and 8th graders. They did a great job with it all and they should be proud," he said. 

Contact reporter Sean Miller at smiller@petoskeynews.com. Follow him on Twitter, @seanmillerpnr, and Instagram, @sean_everest.