After participating in a couple of regional robotic contests, it did not appear that the Montville team would get an invitation to the Ball, in this case, the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. According to the non-profit organization behind this competition, “Teams earned their invitations to the Championship by excelling in competitive play, sportsmanship, and the development of partnerships among schools, businesses, and communities.

 The Montville team did not in fact win in the contests at the New Jersey, New York, or Pennsylvania regionals. What they did was take home the Inspire Award, which is given to the team that best handles the challenge presented to them. Club advisor, Gary Frankel, said it is the highest award given at regionals.

As team captain, Tom Hoffman put it, “We got the last ticket you could win; we went to the last regional and won the last award.”

He noted that as of one week before the competition, the team did not expect to go to Atlanta.

But go they did, with their robot made from a modular robotics kit. They competed in the First Tech Challenge category, in the “Quad Quandry” which required the robots to place three-inch rings on goals and then move the goals around the field. There were about 1,000 high school students participating in this event.

A twist on the competition is that teams must join in random alliances with other teams and then work together towards victory. This means that teams who are total strangers to one another, must work in partnership. The 16 students from Montville had to align themselves with various other groups through qualifying and eliminating rounds before joining in the victorious alliance with the “Beach Cities Robotics” from Redondo Beach, CA, and “Team Overdrive” from Bridgewater.

Describing that moment of victory, Hoffman, who is in 11th grade, said, “The best moment was the final match of the finals, it was hard, we fought right to the end, we barely managed to score. When we won, we went crazy.”

Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway scooter, founded the FIRST Championships in 1989. Behind all the fun lies a serious goal, to “create a world where science and technology are celebrated…where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes.”

Frankel, a science teacher at Montville High School, who advises the team along with Bill Giraud, said the competition was the “culmination of the robotics season.”

The students from Montville were vying with more than 1,500 teams from eight countries, competing in numerous regional events over a period of several months. The top 100 went to Atlanta.

 Working the robot were Hoffman and freshmen Chris Gettel and David Plishka, but all members of the team had an important role. Plishka observed that it was because of the job done by the scouting members of the Mr. T team, that the group did as well as it did.

As for being in the competition, he said, “During the final matches, I got especially nervous thinking this is for  world championship. It’s a big deal.”

In fact, he was awed to see participants from many other countries there. Teams came from Brazil, Canada, Chile, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Plishka said, “I didn’t realize how competitive it was until I went to regionals. I thought it would be a minor thing but I found out a lot of people did it, a lot of schools.”

Gettel observed that the teams at the finals “were good, better than the ones we faced at regionals.”

And Hoffman offered, “It was amazing being there in the Georgia Dome. There were thousands of people. It was nerve wracking; the best teams were there. It was surprising that we won, I am not saying I didn’t think we could win, but a lot of good robots were there.”

Frankel was understandably proud of the students. He said of the competition, “It is hard to put into words the enthusiasm of all the kids. You have to be there to understand it. Such enthusiasm and passion.”

The robotics club at the high school is not new; it has been around for many years and currently has more than 40 members.

Frankel said “Kids come in and see robots and think its cool. It engages them to think in a different way. It gets them to think about problem-solving in the build process.”

Gettel joined because as he said, “I always enjoyed building things with my hands. Robotics was something I wanted to do.”

Many of the students are drawn to the robotics club during the school’s annual club fair, like Plishka and Hoffman were. A number of Hoffman’s friends joined and he thought it looked “cool.” Once in the club he had so much fun that he did not want to stop going.

An aspiring engineer thanks to his experiences with FIRST, Hoffman said, “Some kids think it’s geeky, but the kids I hang out with are fine with it.”

There is certainly nothing  “geeky” about it. As Kamen stated in a FIRST press release: “FIRST is inspiring the next generation of innovators and engineers. Years from now, some of the students who competed in the Georgia Dome will be inventing solutions to society’s most challenging problems.”