Dear Awesome Young Engineers, Supportive Parents and Partners,

What a day! The Qualifier at East Jackson Secondary School was a great showcase for all the hard work and effort our teams have put in. I am so proud of our young engineers. BMS robotics had strong finishes in both match play and awards. I can’t believe we are State Championship bound once again!

Glitch

Team Glitch finished 3-1-1, 10th out of 36 teams. They had a strongest finish of any BMS team. They were awarded the Think Award for the quality of their Engineering Notebook and how it documented the design process. This award is in the advancement list and won Glitch an invitation to the State Championships in the Kellogg Arena, Battle Creek.

Gremlins

With a few bad matchups, the Gremlin Bot fell to 2-3 in match play. However, they cleaned up on the awards. They won both video awards: The Promote Award - a 40 second video commercial for FIRST - with a rap music video. The Compass Award - a video tribute to Anne Findlay, their mentor. (Anne is a current FRC mentor and CHS senior who is an integral part of the mentor team. This was a well deserved recognition for her dedication and hard work since the FTC was formed at Beach. Meep, meep, Anne is Awesome.) They were also Finalists for the Connect award for outreach to engineering and STEM professions in the community and the Motivate award for outreach to the community at large.

Crash

Crash placed 12th in match play, 3-2, and made the Semifinals as the 4th alliances 3rd selection. This is the first time any BMS team made it to the Elimination rounds in any tournament. A big shout out to the Crash for adding Ian Carter (Gremlins) and Andrew Hilbert (Glitch) to their pit crew so it would be an all BMS event. In Awards, the Crash had their turn in Bedford and Mason to pick up trophies. They were finalists in the Innovate Award, for innovation in design. Additionally, they also were Finalists in the Connect and Motivate awards.

It is hard to reiterate how proud I am of all our BMS Robotics’ engineers. They have put in huge blocks of time to build a robot, program a robot, plan a presentation and to reach out to others.

Eat, Sleep, Robots! Coach Marka