Laurens District 55 High School Robotics Team Competes in World Championship

The Laurens District 55 High School Robotics team competed in the FIRST World Championships last week in Houston, Texas.

There were 450 teams from around the world (US, Canada, Mexico, Netherlands, Australia, Turkey, Israel, Chinese Taipei, China, India, Japan, and Brazil) competing in 6 different divisions named for famous scientists/engineers (Turing, Hopper, Roebling, Galileo, Newton, and Carver).  ROBOTZ Garage was assigned to the Roebling Division.

In qualification matches, they finished with a 7-3 record and were ranked 30th out of 76 teams. On Friday night, during the Division Award Ceremony, they were selected for the Judges Award as a result of our work in creating Robotics United (mental health initiative modeled after Laurens United for the robotics community).  This is the third time 4451 has received an award at the Championship event (Rookie Allstar in 2013, and Imagery Award in 2016).

On Saturday, they were the second selection of the #1 ranked robot (Team 3310:  Black Hawk Robotics from Austin, Texas).  Our alliance also consisted of Team 67 – The HOT Team from Highland, Michigan and Team 3539 – Byting Bulldogs from Romeo, Michigan.  They won the quarter finals round 2-0, and the semifinals 2-0.  In the finals of the Roebling Division, they lost the first match 160-166, won the second match 146-126, but lost the 3rd match 116-120.

Competing in the division finals made 4451 one of the last 32 robots (out of over 3,500) still competing in the 2022 season and is the farthest they have advanced in the 10 years of ROBOTZ Garage.

This year was the 7th time the team has participated in the FIRST Championship event in 8 opportunities (the 2020 and 2021 events were cancelled due to COVID-19).

Students had a great time and experienced many new “FIRSTS” (air travel, Metrorail, MLB game Astros vs Angels, NASA Johnson Space Center) and interacted with students from around the world that are just as excited about science, technology, engineering, and math as they are.

It was a very busy four days and the team logged over 21 miles of walking during the competition.

Click HERE to view match results.

Congratulations to ROBOTZ Garage for some great results!