D-S Takes Second Place at Robotics Competition

The Dover-Sherborn High School Robotics Club was awarded the Finalist Alliance trophy at the MASS FTC State Qualifier held in North Andover on Saturday.

The D-S team, who suffered technical problems and equipment failures earlier in the day, overcame these challenges and went on to win the semi-finals when allied with a team from Needham’s St. Sebastian’s School.

They played a Lexington-Sharon alliance in the final game and were narrowly defeated, earning the St. Sebastian's–D-S alliance second place honors.

The club, which is partially funded by the Dover Cultural Council and the Sherborn Arts Council, was founded in the fall of 2011 to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) offers four levels of robotics challenges for different age groups. The FTC is a robotics program for ages 14–18 where teams of up to ten students design, build and program a robot to accomplish tasks in a game designed by FIRST.

Andy Vizulis, the club's volunteer technical mentor, was impressed with the objectives and results of the FTC event.

Vizulis said that "one of our nation's greatest challenges in coming decades will be filling the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) pipeline. Seeing more than 100 students totally focused on perfecting the performance of their amazing robots left me with much needed optimism for the future."

In the round robin portion of the competition the D-S team allied with the St. Sebastian's team produced the highest score of the competition.

When St. Sebastian’s earned the right to form an alliance for the final rounds, they selected D-S as their partner.

Charlie Friesen, co-president of the club said that “St. Seb’s chose us because we complemented them perfectly. They could do things we couldn’t do, and we could push the bowling ball up the ramp and score it in the goal. No other team at the competition could do that.”

Co-president Jake Heinlein said the event “was a lot of fun, not only because we made it to the finals, but also because we came together as a team to quickly fix the problems we encountered.”

The team is looking forward to their next competition at Bridgewater State University next month.