Alaska team wins first place at World Championship
Team Shrödinger’s Hat has brought the first place Inspire Award home to Alaska from the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship. Schrödinger’s Hat competed against the 128 best teams worldwide and won the highest award given in FTC — the Inspire Award. This award celebrates the team FIRST considers to be the model FTC team. The team won the award as a result of their elegant robot design, match performance on the field, detailed engineering notebook, and perhaps most importantly — their extensive community outreach. 3595 has conducted over 60 community outreach events in this past season on the local, statewide, and global level. In particular, the kids are interested in helping to grow new teams in underrepresented and remote areas of Alaska.
“These talented kids are a true example of how hard work, tenacity and dedication pays off,” said Juneau Economic Development Council’s Rebbeca Soza—she is the STEM AK Program Manager for Alaska bringing great programs like FIRST to the state. “To compete and win against teams from large metropolitan areas with vast resources was a testament to our Alaska work ethic and highlights the potential of our local youth.”
“Like true champions, the competitors celebrated their win for a moment then quickly were asking, ‘What’s next?’ Their energy was focused on how this win could improve opportunities for other Alaskan kids and teams. They’re really an inspiration,” Rebbeca said.
Alaska Airlines provided flights for 26 of the 40+ Alaskan youth, coaches, and suporters that attended the World Championship and were among nearly 20,000 competitors. In all, more than 40,000 attended to cheer the teams on.
FIRST in Alaska relies on the contributions of corporate partners like lead sponsor BP, gold sponsor Alaska Airlines, and silver sponsors Alaska Communications and GCI.
FIRST engages over 400,000 students across the world. The Alaska program, coordinated across the state by the Juneau Economic Development Council, includes four level: Junior FIRST LEGO League (grades K-3), FIRST LEGO League (grades 4-8), FIRST Tech Challenge (grades 7-12), and FIRST Robotics Challenge (grades 9-12). At each level of FIRST, students get to build and program their own robots while applying real world math and science concepts. They must demonstrate cooperation within their team as well as during competition by forming alliances with a team they have never met in order to achieve a common goal. The program is billed as, “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.”
To learn more about STEM AK visit our site
To learn more about FIRST in Alaska go here
See more photos of the event at the FIRST in Alaska Facebook page
