2024 FIRST competition has begun for students from around the globe – and HHS has high hopes

An eager group of Huntsville High School students – with support from teachers and parents – are about to embark on a technologically creative journey as they vie to become FIRST Robotics champions.

Led by their confident team co-captain William Zammit and the founder of the HHS Hoya Robotics team, teacher Ian McTavish, the students (a mix of newbies and veterans on the robotics scene) are ready to build their winner. The Hoyas other co-captain, who couldn’t make the launch event, is Sofia Webster.

Zammit is counting on his team’s experience and strong performance last year to achieve their goals of qualifying for the provincials (in Mississauga) and then worlds (being held in Houston). Their first FIRST challenge is the district qualifier in North Bay in late March.

“I think last year we saw an exponential growth in our skills, and I think this game is very much a challenge we can tackle and I’m excited to see how we do,” he says.

The 2024 FIRST Competition was announced on January 6, with over 50 people (including representatives from other nearby schools) congregating at the HHS cafeteria to find out what theme and rules of the competition would entail.

The kickoff event, viewed via live broadcast by 3,500 teams covering 28 countries, shared the theme CRESCENDO and then each team received their “Kickoff Kit” that consists of motors, batteries, control system components, construction materials, and a mix of additional automation components.

This kit of parts is the starting point of the competition – indeed the team stayed at the school until well into the evening to get the proverbial ball rolling.

Working with adult mentors, students have limited time to design, build, program, and test their robots to meet the season’s challenge. Once these young inventors build a robot, their teams will participate in one or more of the global 171 Regional and District events that measure the effectiveness of each robot, the power of collaboration, and the determination of students. Qualifying events begin worldwide in late February.

“Excitement is the first thing that pops to mind,” says Zammit. “Something that I really enjoy in games is variety and different ways to score and that’s the first thing that this game shows us … is we can score in multiple ways.”

In terms of strategy, while acknowledging needing to look further, Zammit already was thinking about ideas on how the Hoyas team could maximize their points. To achieve the best results, the Hoyas will use everyone on their team in the best way possible – including who will be the human who gets to pass rings and score points along with the soon-to-be-built robot.

“I’m leaning toward shooting on the lower area and then moving into the Higher area back-and-forth to keep amping, which gives you bonus points,” he says. “In order to amp yourself, you need to score in the lower area first, so it’s going back-and-forth is probably going to be the best way to maximize points.”

For all the rules, competition information, event dates and more, visit: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc

Great Growth in Robotics at HHS

McTavish, who established the Hoyas Robotics program in 2012, had a huge smile on his face while discussing the 50-student team (plus adult mentors) that will be working together on the competition this year.

“For a lot of these kids, this is more important than Christmas,” says McTavish. “They live and breathe this. I have kids that, if we kept the school open until midnight, would still be here. It’s going to be exciting to watch them go through the design process.”

He adds with a laugh: “There are kids already itching for snow days because then they can come in and work on the robot but no be distracted by classes.”

There has been a tremendous amount of growth in the robotics program since those early days when a handful of students would gather to build some really cool machines.

“The nice thing is we’ve built the team in a lot of different areas,” says McTavish. “For example, we have a cooking subteam, so the meal prepared today are kids that are on the team that are part of our hospitality program at the school. Their goal is to get into the restaurant industry. So even though we’re building robots where we’re in so many other areas for kids.”

As well, there are many other courses being offered that are offshoots of the robotics program. A grant from Canadian tool manufacturing associations helped purchase new CNC equipment.

“The kids are being exposed to the high-end real-world things,” he says. “Our alumni are coming back and they’re working an industry based on what they started here. The growth is here.”

Hoyas Captains Helping Others

The Hoyas are helping other teams as well – Fenelon Falls was at HHS to watch the launch program – and Zammit created a progamming textbook last year that is being used every from China to Australia to England and of course here in Canada.

“We identified that we weren’t doing a great job of sharing the information and helping students learn how to how to program robots, so he created a textbook that textbook is now used by 100 teams worldwide. It’s awesome.”

Zammit, who would like to be a professor in the future, says though the textbook was originally a resource for his own team to learn more about programming, he was very happy to learn about all the other teams using it.

“We have gotten so many people that have access to the textbook and it’s just really exciting to see that the resources actually helping people,” he says.

His Hoyas co-captain, Sophia Webster, has always been instrumental in helping others learn about robotics. McTavish says she introduced a day camp program on robotics last summer.

“Her goal is to expand the opportunities for kids,” he says. “We have a couple kids on the team now that started in her day camp program and because of that experience are now on the team. It’s really exciting because they’re starting to really spread beyond these walls and do some exciting things in the community.”

Zammit says it’s great to see new members of the team and recalls how when he first started there was a bit of nervousness on how he could contribute. As well, he highlights how important teamwork is when building robots for competition, a great life skill when heading out into the world.

“It very much highlights the amount of teamwork that’s critical for these engineering challenges; one person can not do it by themselves,” says Zammit. “What we’ve like what we’ve seen in past years is when the team starts to move away and people start to work less and less, it becomes really hard for the people that are working by themselves. Our team is always at it strongest when everyone’s working together and all focused on that common goal.”

This year, that common goal is to qualify for the provincials first, the worlds next and do their very best every step of the way.