Gazette News Report
XENIA — The Roboticons, a Xenia-based science and technology team, advanced to the FIRST Tech Challenge’s state competition in Cincinnati after winning a qualifying event.
The team’s robot, Big Red, was able to pick up a ball and place it on top of a center vortex to win the trophy. Team members Ryan Lapchynski (a senior at Dayton Regional STEM School); Anjali Phadke (a junior at DRSS); Michelle Wong (a sophomore at Wayne High School); and Devan Lapchynski (a freshman at Xenia High School) built the robot with this aspect of the challenge in mind.
Team members said designing, testing and redesigning have kept them busy, and applying the engineering process to this team-based challenge makes learned concepts so much more real-world useful.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a world-wide organization seeking to promote excitement for the STEM fields. FIRST programs include Jr. FLL for ages 6-10; FLL for ages 9-14; FTC for ages 12-18; and FRC for ages 14-18.
The team has been sponsored for the last two years by Kelly Jones of Nationwide Insurance in Xenia. She has provided donations toward the team expenses for the past two years. The team is coached by Doug Lapchynski and Mary Jane Foos.