The Gunston School’s Robotics Team recently competed in two major Robotics tournaments in Annapolis and Montgomery, becoming the first school on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to enter the prestigious FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics competition. All participating students are part of the school’s Robotics Engineering class where they learn to build and program lego, tetrix, and arduino based robots—which includes an introduction to programming languages.
Facing off against high school teams from around the state, Gunston’s robots scored goals, dragged and pushed objects around a complex game field, all in an attempt to outdo the competing team’s robots. The FIRST Program demands that students overcome a number of challenges: hardware inspection, software inspection, field inspection, and presentation of the engineering logbook to the judges.
Despite competing against much larger public, private, and magnet schools, the team has enjoyed an outstanding rookie season, placing 10th in the Annapolis competition and 16th in the Montgomery competition. Mentored by Science Chair Dr. Ken Wilson—who directs Gunston’s growing Robotics program, and Director of Technology Joe Thompson—who has introduced computer coding into the curriculum, the team was led by senior captain John Panor, and the robot was designed, built, and programmed by seniors Justin Covell and Caleb Enriquez. The team also included senior Jonah Webb, sophomore Ryan Redding, junior Claire Schmittinger, sophomore Fizz Ju, and sophomore Darian Cai.
Dr. Wilson noted, “Gunston’s FTC team is a product of the school’s longstanding and strong strong focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and in addition to being part of the Robotics class, most of our team members are also members of our science and engineering club. It’s an honor to work with such a talented, creative, and self-motivated group of students.”
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