Calabar and York Castle High win top awards at the National Robotics Championship
ON SATURDAY, February 29, the twoday FIRST Tech Challenge Jamaica National Robotics Championship, held at Jamaica College, culminated in an exciting awards ceremony where two out of the 31 registered teams made it to the top, along with other teams receiving special recognition.
In the presence of the event’s title sponsor and special guest Nadeen Matthews-Blair, chief digital and marketing officer and chief executive officer of the NCB Foundation, along with other sponsors, FIRST Tech Challenge Jamaica judges, referees and field technical advisers, various awards were presented to the teams. The bevy of awards consisted of The Judges’ Award, Control Award, sponsored by Arm Inc, Motivate Award, Design Award, The Collins Aerospace Innovate Award, Connect Award, Think Award, the finalist and winning alliances, Dean’s List Awardees, NCB Foundation SPIRIT Award, and the Inspire Award.
The Inspire Award, the most coveted award of the competition, went to Calabar High School. According to FIRST Tech Challenge Jamaica, “The Inspire Award is presented to the team that the judges felt truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FIRST Tech Challenge programme. The team that received this award were strong ambassadors for FIRST programmes and works to promote FIRST. They have performed well in all judging categories and were chosen by the judges as a model FIRST Tech Challenge team, both on and off the playing field. This team shares their experiences, enthusiasm and knowledge with other teams, sponsors, their community, and the judges. Working as a unit, this team showed success in performing the task of designing and building a robot. The judges used observations made during interviews and in the pit area, the team’s engineering notebook, and performance on the playing field in determining the winner.”