The Bobcat roboticists had their first home game, and they took first place in the South League Division. Competing against teams that have had much more experience. in both

building and coding, while standing on even ground with them shows how hard the Bobcat roboticists work. Considering that the BOYCP Robotics team is still growing in both members and experience, this ranking is an impressive feat.

The FIRST® Tech Challenge is a unique and stimulating experience geared towards students. Each year, the challenges change to keep unfair advantages from being taken with extra time for planning and designing. In the FIRST® Tech Challenge, designing, building, testing, programming for autonomous, and driver-operated robots remain constant. The challenges faced annually are always changing; this is done to ensure that no team gets an upper-hand over the other through off-season times.

When Nadia Pinto, a sophomore from Robotics, was asked how she felt competition day went she replied, “Today was a stressful yet amazing day. We are currently ranked first in the South League Division! Not only that, but we are a very small team with two years of experience. Overall, I feel proud because of our teamwork.” Nadia summed up the emotions of any team after a difficult game perfectly. Stressful but amazing is the perfect way to describe a victory.
 After being asked if anything could have been done better, Nadia replied, “…there is always room for improvement, even when you are ranked at first.” Nadia’s humbling words goes perfectly with the overall view that the team has ambition, no matter what position that the roboticists are in!   

As conversation struck with Coach Trauger, she stated how communication is one of the strongest assets to the team, “I think a strength of our team is that our Drive Teams actively communicate, and a result manage to score all obtainable points.” In a competition where three people are all operating one robot, communication is of importance. Without communication, the team would suffer tremendously. The coach went to state why the performance of the team is strong, “I think that our strong performance can mostly be credited to the fact that the team prioritizes entering every match with a running, if sometimes simple, robot, and working well together as a drive team to play it as well as possible.” In combination with having great communication skills and a functioning robot for every competition, the drive of the team is what makes them so successful.

If you would like to support the Bobcats in their next competition, city qualifiers, it will be at Benito Juarez High School on February 18th. All 33 teams will be competing this time, and only the top 6 to 7 teams will advance to the Illinois State Championship.

– Eleazar Martinez