On Saturday, March 7, the first ever scrimmages were held for several area high school robotics teams at the UACJ Whitehall Industries FIRST Robotics Practice Facility.
Nine West Michigan teams showed up eager to test out their robots to kick off Week 1 of the FIRST competition season.
Ludington team member Keaton Gutowski (R) has been involved in robotics since 6th grade. He and LHS alumnus Jaiden Rhodes understood how beneficial the practice rounds would be for every team.
"This is exactly why the practice facility was created last year," said Brian Dotson, MiSTEM Region 9 Director. "The scrimmages provided opportunities for local high school teams to run their robots and ramp up their engineering and robot driving skills prior to participating in the two statewide qualifying competitions."
Sisters, sophomore Morgan Stocks (L) and junior Rylee Stocks (R), drove the MCE Cardinaltronics robot during match play.
The nine teams were able to use the practice facility free of charge thanks to the generosity of many community sponsorships.
Thanks also go to the West Shore ESD's Summit Tech Center's Construction Trades class for building the various stations at the practice facility in accordance with very specific FIRST Robotics guidelines.