Xavier High School Robotics
November 20, 2013
The Xavier High School Robotics team is only in its second year of existence.But despite being such a new club, the team has had great success, claiming several awards last year as well as making it to the F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) championship in St. Louis, Missouri. The team leaders this year are senior members Zack Radel (2015) of Middletown who leads engineering, Jamison Kief (2016) of Southington who leads programming, and Kevin Iott (2016) of North Haven who is in charge of the business aspects of the team as well as its outreach. The Moderator of the team is Mr. Mike Ricciuti or “Mr. Mike” as many of you might know him, and this year, the team is prepared for great success.
The robotics team, known as the Full Metal Falcons, made their debut last year, propelled by their strong interest in robotics competitions and inspiration from the Mercy Tech Tigers who had already been doing robotics for three years. The Mercy team eased the Full Metal Falcons into the season, showing them their own robot in action and teaching them about how the competitions worked. Now, the teams support each other when they need help and keep each other company at the meets.
The Full Metal Falcons had a great deal of success throughout last year’s season. The challenge last year was called the “Ultimate Ascent” and required robots to climb up onto three different levels and shoot discs for points. The teams were also put into alliances and the teams that demonstrated the most cooperation received the greatest number of points. At the regional competition, the Full Metal Falcons won four awards. These were the “Rookie All-Star” award which recognizes outstanding achievement by a first year team; the “Highest Rookie Seed” award which celebrates the highest seeded rookie team; The “Number One Pit Safety” award which recognizes the team that exercises the expected safety precautions the best; and, the “Underwriters’ Laboratory ‘Star of the Day’” award which was given to the Full Metal Falcons for being prepared to neutralize the acid from one of the competing team’s leaking battery. Then, Xavier’s team advanced to the championships in St. Louis Missouri where they won the “Highest Rookie Seed” award in the Galileo Division. The Xavier team was also ranked the 3rd best rookie team in the world!
Zack Radel said “This year, we want to improve upon what we accomplished last year”. Now that the team has gone through this before, they know the ropes and are doing their best to recruit new members to the team to work on the many tasks for building and programming the complex robot. The team meets in the Xavier High School basement on Thursdays every week from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM and they do their very best to prepare for the challenging season ahead.
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