The Tuxedo Pandas, a local FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team, are state champions.

Students from six different schools in Montgomery County have been building a robot since September and competed in qualifying competitions to reach the Virginia State Championship held at Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg the weekend of Feb. 25.

This FTC team 4924 was ranked number seventeen after all the qualifying matches. Because the Tuxedo Pandas’ robot could easily detect and reset field beacons, the team was selected by a third ranked Team 4634, the Frogbots of Gainesville, to form an alliance in the semifinals.

After several close matches to avoid double elimination, this union of robotic teamwork won these middle and high school students the designation of being the best FTC teams in Virginia.

Along with winning the PTC Design Award and earning third place for a Connect Award, the Tuxedo Panda champions will be representing Virginia at the East Super-Regional competitions to be held the weekend of March 17-19.

Over 128 teams along the northeast coast of the United States will be in Scranton, Pennsylvania to determine which twenty teams will advance to the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis in April.

 

Over 128 teams along the northeast coast of the United States will be in Scranton, Pennsylvania to determine which twenty teams will advance to the FIRST World Championship in St. Louis in April.

William Tipton, a high school junior, will be making his third trip to Super-Regionals and is the lead programmer for the Tuxedo Pandas.

Sebastien Wilkinson, a ninth grader, is a rookie on the team. He has been working with Tipton on learning the programming language to help the robot complete autonomous tasks in competition.

“I am excited to be traveling out of the state for this competition. I am working to make the programming work better,” Wilkinson said.

Jackie Wang, an eighth grader, is also a rookie. While this first year building robots has been fun, she is nervous about this competition.

“We have worked on this robot for a long time. It is scary to represent the whole state,” she said.

Arnav Garg, an eighth grader said, “It feels good to be state champions. There is pressure on us to improve.”

Coach Franky Marchand agrees there is always room for improvement. The team’s first robot of the season was good enough for the first round of qualifiers but a second robot was built to meet the demands of the challenges on the playing field to score more points.

However, Marchand feels optimistic about the Tuxedo Pandas fourth time to the Super-Regionals.

“Our chances are strong. This second robot is looking good. However, our team has performed more outreach than ever before and taught more kids about STEM to help our chances to advance to Worlds,” he said.