Avondale High School robotics team finishes in top 1% at FIRST World Championship

Avondale High School robotics team, the RoboJackets, traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to compete in the FIRST World Championship against thousands of teams from thirty-nine countries around the world. The team finished in the top 1% of all competitors and received a trophy as District winners.

The RoboJackets team has been together for three years, making it to the state competition in their second year and the world competition this year. Avondale High School senior Katherine Winter, who has been on the team since its inception, is proud of the team’s showing at all of their competitions, “in our first two years as a team, we received several individual awards and earned high rankings at the competitions and we were proud of what we’d done," said Winter. "This year though, making it to the world games - there isn’t a way to describe how that felt. It’s all amazing and it says a lot about the dedication of every team member and the hard work of our coaches and mentors,” she added.

Winter is joined on the team by Avondale High School seniors Mohuiddin Baig, Alexandra Brinker, Victor Lee, Viraj Nakum and Frank Suriano; juniors Hayvin Bolton, Catherine Javier, Zaeem Shuttari and Clayton Spevak; sophomores Ryan Feng and Richard Zhovner; and freshmen Noah Baliat, Nathan Dowden and Adam Passalacqua.

The team is mentored by engineers and STEM leaders from the community including Kenneth Abbott from Tweddle Group who over-sees the team; RoboJacket’s Head Coach, Allison Kneisler of NRG Youth Focus; Adlai Milbitz, Lead Engineer, TA-Systems; Tyrone Gallagher, Software and CAD Engineer, General Dynamics; Peter Bonucci, Programming Engineer, Chrysler; Steve Logan, Mechanical Engineer, FCA; and Jason Weihman, Mechanical Engineer, VEX Robotics. Along with the mentor and coaching support, the group receives financial support from Plastic Engineering and Technical Services in Auburn Hills, Fiat Chrysler Automotive, ABB Robotics and the Avondale Education Foundation.

“Without our partners, who provide funding, resources and mentors, we wouldn’t be able to provide this unmatched learning experience for the students,” said Abbott who, like Winter, has been with the team since its beginning. “Without this experience, the students would be missing an important opportunity for a real-world application of not only STEM-related skills but also skills developed through collaboration-based learning.”

Winter recognizes the importance of the tangible and intangible skill building that goes along with robotics teams and competitions but for her, discovering the shared passion of thousands of students from around the world was the heart of the experience. “The World Championship was the best thing I’ve ever done – the experience of being surrounded by thousands and thousands of people with the same interests and goals was beyond description.”

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