Jamestown High School robotics team competes at regional event in Minnesota

Kathy Steiner, The Jamestown Sun, N.D.
·2 min read

Apr. 17—JAMESTOWN — The FRC7578 Quantum Mechanics robotics team at Jamestown High School finished in seventh place at a regional FIRST Robotics Competition on April 6-7 in St. Cloud, Minnesota, said their coach, Jordan Montgomery.

Montgomery said the rookie team of six students, including five from JHS and one from Montpelier High School, competed against teams with twice as much funding and up to six times the number of students. The local students competing for the first time were Miah Tyson, Layna Hoffer, Brennen Roepke, Ty Everett, Brock Truax and Cody Veldkamp.

James Valley Robotics Association, a local nonprofit organization, runs the team and partners with Jamestown Public Schools to work with students in Jamestown, said Montgomery, who is also the executive director for JVRA. Students from surrounding districts are invited to participate, he said.

The FIRST Robotics Competition is for students in grades 9-12. Each year FIRST comes out with a new "game," and students build their robots to compete in specific tasks at regional competitions in March through early April.

Montgomery said the JHS team designed, built and programmed "an amazing-looking and functioning robot in three months."

At the competition, the JHS team worked with two other teams, called an alliance, against an alliance of three other teams. The alliances are random, so students don't know who they play with or against until they are at the event, and every match has a different group of teams competing, Montgomery said. Teams are ranked based on their performance in each match. The JHS team played with 12 teams at this event, Montgomery said. They work together to score points and win.

In the qualifying matches, the Jamestown team in its first alliance beat the alliance with the top-ranked team. Later, the Jamestown team went on to beat the new top-ranked team, Montgomery said. The Jamestown team individually ranked 13 at the end of the qualifying matches out of 54 teams and was eliminated in the semifinals, with its alliance taking seventh overall in the playoffs.

FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — is an international nonprofit organization that operates STEM programming for students K-12.

The Jamestown team will hold a community demonstration of the robot they built at 7 p.m. Friday, April 26, in the Commons at Jamestown High School. The event is open to the public.