Two of Thomas County Central High School’s Robotics teams advanced to state level competition at the Circuit Runners FIRST Tech Challenger (FTC) Qualifier recently held in Marietta. 

The CyberStingers Green team #8433 advanced because of their robot performance, and the CyberStingers Gold team #6988 advanced because of the detail and thought put into their engineering notebook.

“I was very proud of all of our teams,” Coach Laura Kornegay said. “The teams worked hard in preparation for this last qualifier and it’s rewarding for them to see their hard work pay off.”

FTC uses a sports model for students to compete head-to-head with their robots.  Students design, build and program their robots to move along a 12-foot by 12-foot playing field.

This year’s challenge, “Res-Q,” involves moving blocks and balls to a goal zone, and climbing a steep mountain.  Teams compete in matches with an alliance. At the end of the qualifying matches, the top four teams select two alliance partners to compete in elimination matches. 

TCCHS’s CyberStingers Green team was selected to play in the final rounds. They beat their first opponent, but fell in a close loss in the final rounds, giving them a second place finish.  This ranking qualified them to compete at the state tournament to be held Feb. 13 in Marietta.

“It was interesting to see how other teams took different approaches to the challenge,” sophomore Hailey Ferrel said. “We were happy with how consistently our robot worked.”

The CyberStingers Gold team was recognized with the Think Award.  This award recognized the team displaying Gracious Professionalism toward other teams, and for having an engineering notebook that clearly showed their path in designing their robot. 

“We worked hard on documenting our engineering process from the beginning and it paid off for us,” team captain and third year FTC veteran Katricia Fann said.

The CyberStingers Blue team finished the qualifying rounds in the top 10, falling short of advancing to state level. 

The teams are coached by teachers Laura Kornegay and Brian Bellamy.  Patrick Harden from Evoqua Water Technologies mentors the three teams.

For more information on the FTC and other FIRST robotics programs, go to www.usfirst.org.

The state FTC tournament will be held Saturday at Kell High School in Marietta.