The “AHC Transformers” robotics team participated in the opening competition of the 2017 FIRST Robotics Competition season Saturday-Sunday, March 4-5 in Haymarket, VA. FIRST Robotics Competition is recognized as the premier high school engineering challenge. Teams of students, working closely with teachers and volunteer mentors, have six weeks to conceptualize, design, build, program, modify and test a robot to participate in a competition that changes each year. The girls on the Holy Cross team have been working towards this accomplishment since last fall when the robotics team was launched. The team acquired both a $6,000 NASA grant for the materials to build the robot that is used in the competition and the support of five corporate sponsors and a university partnership.
On Thursday, March 2, the girls demonstrated for the school how their robot worked.
The team was among 39 teams from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC. Over the course of the weekend the girls competed in 12 matches and received the “Rookie Inspiration Award,” which “celebrates a rookie team’s outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering and engineers, both within their school, as well as in their community.”