St. Margaret’s FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Robotics team is heading to the Southern California Championships in March after an eventful interleague tournament in Diamond Bar. 

 

Out of 28 teams, St. Margaret’s was honored with the Control Award, given to the team whose robot demonstrated exemplary use of code and sensors for navigation. St. Margaret’s team won the award after installing a camera on the robot and training an artificial intelligence algorithm to recognize the location of blocks in the arena, then using sensors and navigation algorithms to place the object in the correct location to earn points. 

 

St. Margaret’s also formed an alliance with top-ranked Operation TAC, another San Juan Capistrano-based team, and together the two teams swept tournament play and placed first at the Diamond Bar tournament. 

 

As part of the winning alliance, St. Margaret’s qualified for the SoCal FTC Championship, which will take place in Monrovia on March 9. 

 

St. Margaret’s FTC team is made up of 12 Upper School students and captained by senior Jack Justus. Other team members are senior Alex Turnbull, juniors Ian Ekvall, Vaughn Bosu, Sophia Fu, Tanner Evanson, Lola Quan, Alexa Edwards and Grayson Gallegos and Allie Dandel, and sophomores Ross Johnson and Benjamin Harrison. They are advised by Upper School teacher David Lin. 

 

Congratulations Tartans!