NHS robotics team wins Rocket Center Regional

This year’s game was “Power Up” and featured alliances of robots that gathered 13-inch cubes to place on switches and scales. The details of the game were released in January and the team had six weeks to design, build, and test their robot.

The Niceville High School Robotics team, the RadioActive Roaches, won first place at the FIRST (firstinspires.org) Rocket Center Regional in Huntsville the week of March 14, 2018.

The team (22 members and 6 coaches/mentors) competed with and against 43 other high school teams. Most of the teams were from the southeast but there also were teams from Michigan, Texas, and Brazil as well.

This year’s game was “Power Up” and featured alliances of robots that gathered 13-inch cubes to place on switches and scales. The details of the game were released in January and the team had six weeks to design, build, and test their robot.

“As fate would have it, in the finals we faced the No. 2 team that have given us our only loss in the qualifiers,” said  Ben Shuman, coach.

“We won the first best of three. Lost the second. Regrouped and dominated the tiebreaker and won the tournament. “

This is the first regional championship the NHS team has earned.  Shuman said he believes this is the first championship for any school in north Florida.

The next stop is Houston in April where the NHS team will go against 400 of the best teams from around the world, said Shuman.

For more information about the FIRST Championships, visit https://www.firstchampionship.org/welcome.