The corridors and classrooms at St. Clair College were packed with high school students from across the province over the weekend for the FIRST Tech Challenge qualifier tournament, aptly dubbed 'Into the Deep.'
High school students hailing from Richmond Hill, Whitby, Mississauga, Brampton, and London joined teams from Windsor-Essex to compete against one another in this FIRST Tech Challenge, which is considered a stepping-stone towards the highly popular FIRST Robotics competitions.
"The College is a huge supporter of the FIRST initiative, having recently hosted the FIRST LEGO League event in November and the FIRST Robotics Competition season kick-off event just a week prior," said John Byng, St. Clair College's Chair of the School of Engineering Technologies.
The long-standing partnership between FIRST and St. Clair College started in 2013 with a humble LEGO qualifier event with only nine teams. Since then, the College has hosted dozens of events, together with FIRST impacting thousands of kids in their educational and developmental journeys.
"It was a fun day and an opportunity to showcase the College to potential future students across the province, introducing them to our house," said Byng. "And for the day, our house was their house!"
Students are challenged to work together with mentors to design and build robots to compete in a dynamic and exciting challenge where they program classroom-scale robots to follow autonomous commands before student drivers take control in two-on-two matches.
"On and off the field, students develop STEM skills, engage in community outreach, practice engineering innovation, and build confidence to help them succeed," reads an excerpt from the FIRST Tech Challenge website.
Byng notes it was also an opportunity for many student volunteers from the College's Robotics programs to support the event, which is relatively new to the Windsor area.
Of the four local schools taking part in the challenge, UMEI (Team 19530 - The Thunderbirds) from Leamington finished in the top three and received the coveted "Inspire Award."
The Thunderbirds have been competing in the FIRST Tech Challenge for three seasons, and a total of 12 official events since 2019.
They described themselves as "a small, close-knit team" made up of five Grade 12 students based out of UMEI Christian High School in Leamington.
Also competing locally were The Maranatha Christian Academy 'Infinity 2 Robotics' team, a LaSalle community team called the 'Cheetahs,' and a Windsor community squad named 'Genio101.'
The teams will continue with qualifier tournaments until the Provincial Championships on Feb. 23 at Brock University in St. Catherines.
