Boulan Park FTC Team “Midnight Creators” Compete at World Championship

Boulan Park Middle School sent an all-girls team to the First Tech Challenge (FTC) Robotics World competition in Houston, TX. The team #16607 known as “Midnight Creators” advanced to Worlds from the Michigan State Championship, as a Second Place Inspire Award Winner at State Championship and placed impressively up against many older student groups at the international competition. First Tech in Michigan limits FTC participants to be only from 6th to 8th Grade, but most of the US States and other countries allow High schoolers also to compete at FTC level.

“The girls proudly represented Boulan Park Middle School, Troy School District and State of Michigan at the worlds and participated with a lot of energy amongst many high school teams,” said parent coach Laksh Parthasarathy. “They learned a lot, interacted with teams from all over the world, made presentations to judges and most of all had a great experience.”

According to their website: The FIRST Robotics Competition is a ten-week program in which students build 125-pound (54 kg) robots designed to compete in a game that changes each year. Students are given sets of parts to use, but they can also use off-the-shelf or custom-made parts. The FIRST Tech Challenge is a mid-level competition program for middle school and high school aged students with a more accessible and affordable robotics kit.

Students felt really proud of their achievement, as well: “I felt really proud of advancing to the World Championships because I felt like all the work that we've done this whole season has resulted in this, and also because I've been on this team since the beginning,” said Nidhi Narayanan. “I felt like everything that I had learned over the years contributed to us achieving this fabulous outcome.” Representing Boulan Park Middle School and the Troy School District as one of very few all-girls teams was very inspiring as well, because “it was really cool to show everyone how we do things here,” continued Narayanan, who plans to continue her work with FIRST tech next year on the Troy/Athens/IAE FRC (high school level)Team 226 Hammerheads.

There were 160 teams from all over US and world ( incl. Canada, Mexico, Romania, Germany, Israel, India, Korea etc.) at the Championships. The following BPMS students represented Troy:

1. Nidhi Narayanan (8th Grade)

2. Anusha Gupta (8th Grade)

3. Arya Iyer (8th Grade)

4. Riya Athalye (8th Grade)

5. Pranya Vadaddi (8th Grade)

6. Sree Dhruti Maringanti (6th Grade)

The following students (also from Boulan Park and part of the team), weren’t able to be there due to other conflicts:

1. Avani Singh (7th grade)

2. Meera Ravi (7th grade)

3. Ananya Siranjeevi (6th grade)

4. Bhavisha Santoshkumar (7th grade)

# # #

Photos courtesy of Troy Schools, Photo #4 L to R: Arya Iyer, Pranya Vadaddi, Nidhi Narayanan, Anusha Gupta, Riya Athalye and Sree Dhruti Maringanti