CCA Robotics wins All-Star Award at San Diego Regional

CCA Robotics team with winning Robot

Amid much cheering and applause, Canyon Crest Academy’s FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Team, the Aluminum Narwhals, captured the Rookie All-Star Award at the FIRST San Diego Regional Competition Saturday, March 6, at the San Diego Sports Arena. The All-Star Award is the most prestigious award that a rookie team can win at the Regional competition.
The award celebrates the rookie team exemplifying a young but strong partnership effort among its team members, mentors and sponsors, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology. The award includes an invitation to compete at the FIRST National Championships April 15-17, at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Ga.
CCA faced off against 49 high school robotics teams from around the country and seven other rookie teams in the three day San Diego tournament. CCA’s Robotics team earned its place in the FIRST San Diego competition by designing, building, and programming a sophisticated robot in just six weeks that could play this year’s game, Breakaway, a fast-paced variation of soccer.
CCA was selected as the winner of Rookie All-Star Award based upon the performance of its robot, a 3,000 word essay and a video describing the team’s progress, and interviews with 21 judges from California’s top engineering companies over a two day period of the competition.
Team President Logan Mercer, a junior at CCA, acted as spokesperson for the team in the interviews, and answered questions on the robot’s complex engineering and programming systems, the team’s organizational structure, its financial plan and its marketing program. The team’s video may be viewed on its website, www.team3128.org.
The team’s robot was remotely operated by a drive team which included junior Michael Wahl and sophomores Garrison Price, James Quintana and Jared Schrok. The team’s pit at the competition was run by senior Dominic Dufour, sophomore James Dial and freshmen Pia Elbe and Brian Sandler. In addition, freshmen Nic Stone and Nick Van Campen acted as scouts for the team, junior Tyler Carter was the team’s ambassador to the VIP’s at the event, and senior Ben Brust and sophomore Aryan Sanikhatam shared duties as the team’s Aluminum Narwhal mascot.
“Winning this award was an enormous team effort,” said Mercer. “We have a lot of talented students on our team and a great relationship with our mentors and teachers. The All-Star award is very motivating and we feel confident taking our team to Nationals. We are proud to be representing our high school and the city of San Diego.”
Formed in September 2009, CCA’s FRC Team includes 60 students, two faculty advisors and nine mentors including six professional engineers. The team met three times a week after school and at lunch to develop its programming, design and fabrication skills prior to the season’s kick-off. From January 9 to February 23, the team met seven days a week, after school and on the weekends, building the robot and meeting the other requirements of the competition.
"The Aluminum Narwhals have defined education at CCA in a new and very exciting way!" responded CCA Principal, Brian Kohn, to his team’s success. Kohn and CCA Foundation Liaison, Joel Hartley initiated the robotics team last summer as a means of creating more interest in science, technology, math and engineering at the school. The team’s faculty advisors are computer programming teacher Michael Remington and physics and engineering teacher Stephen Yip. Mentors include Hartley, ProCon, Inc., Jim Dufour, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Ken Farinsky, Scala, Inc., Dave Walborn, ViaSat, Inc., Hauke Bartsch, Linda de Stephano, Rhonda Epstein, Jeff Krusen, and Shan McClure.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a national nonprofit organization that encourages students to discover the rewards and excitement of science, engineering and technology. Working with professional mentors, students are challenged to design, build, and program their robot to compete in a robotics sporting event. Each year is a new engineering challenge as the robot specifications and game rules change.
This year’s game, Breakaway, pitted two alliance teams of three robots each squaring off on a 54’ by 27’ playing field that was divided in three sections by two 13” high bumps with one 18” tall tunnel each. The robots scored points by “kicking” soccer balls into goals. In order to play the whole field, robots had to be able to traverse the bumps or fit through the tunnels. In addition to scoring points by goals, a robot could score bonus points by elevating itself and other robots on one of two towers in the middle of the field at the end of each match.
The 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition season is expected to include 1,800 high school teams from around the world competing in 44 Regional FRC events. The National Championships will be attended by more than 220 of the top scoring teams from the Regional events. More than 25,000 people are expected to attend the event. The participants are eligible to receive $12 million in scholarships from some of the finest science and engineering universities and colleges in the country.
For information on additional sponsorship opportunities for the CCA FIRST Robotics Competition team, please contact info@team3128.org or visit www.team.org.