Warwick Robotics Team wins firspt place for Connect Award and heads to First Tech Challenge Regional Championship

PEEKSKILL — On Saturday, Jan. 27, after a tough day of coding, building and competing against other robots, team #11995 Team T.A.C.A, (Total And Complete Amateurs) from Warwick secured a place at the Hudson Valley FIRST Tech Challenge Regional Finals to be held at Pace University on Feb. 11.
This was a remarkable achievement for the team. They were only a team of middle schoolers competing against 19 other high school age teams at the FTC Qualification Tournament at Peekskill High School on Jan. 27.
FTC is a FIRST Tech Challenge competition where teams in grades 7-12 are challenged to design, build, program and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge.
Participants called it “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.”
Guided by coaches, teams develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles like keeping an engineering notebook, while realizing the value of hard work, innovation and sharing ideas.
Teams also must raise funds, design and market their team brand and do community outreach for which they can win awards.
The Warwick team members Aiden Woods, Kalen Luraschi and Sawyer Masefield won first place in "The Connect Award" category for connecting with the local community through the Farmers Market and the computing and engineering community in Warwick by promoting their T.A.C.A. Team Brand.
They built, designed and coded their robot working long hours after school and on the weekends.
They are now ranked one of the top teams in the Hudson Valley Region.
They look forward to the next exciting chapter of their journey at Pace University in February.
For more information and to contact the team, visit http://warwickrobotics.weebly.com/.