Firebirds On Fire: Mount Robotics Team Takes Top Prize at Regional Competition

Our Firebirds robotics team took top prize at the 2023 FIRST Mid-Atlantic District competition at Hatboro Horsham High School this weekend! The hardworking team topped 34 other teams from across PA, NJ and Delaware. This marks the first time the Firebirds have won a major competition, since the program started 24 years ago. In addition to the win on the field, the team also earned an award for Team Sustainability, which celebrated the work the team has been doing to promote long term growth and success through our freshman and sophomore robotics teams and the support of the Academy's Bob Foell STEM Scholarship.  

For every FIRST competition the teams are required to tackle the same challenge and compete against other for points. This year's game challenge is titled "Charged Up" and consists of building a robot that will process game pieces in order to "create energy" for a hypothetical community. The robots must also be able to dock at a "charge station." The Firebirds did an incredible amount of preparation for the competition. The team was given its game challenge on January 7, 2023 and from there they had 7 weeks to prototype, design in CAD, build, program, and test the robot. The Firebirds meet three times a week and on weekends when they're preparing for competition.

The season has been exciting and busy for the team. The "build" stage of the season was filled with a variety of ideas, prototypes, iterations, and redesigns. The team refined all those ideas and designs to end up with their winning robot at Hatboro Horsham. The Firebirds now have their sights set on the next district Tournament at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy on 3/18 and 3/19.  

Robotics mentor Hannah Farrell shared, "About 144 hours have gone into designing, building, and programming this robot thus far and we aren't finished yet. This past week we have been working on designing/building improvements to mechanisms and coding/testing new autonomous routines. We want to continuously improve so we're prepared to face potentially tougher teams at the State level tournament in early April. If we do well at states, we could be headed to the World Championship in late April!"

The Mount has We have 3 Robotics teams at the Mount: 2 JV FTC teams which compete in the fall for Freshman and Sophomores, and 1 Varsity FRC team which competes in the Spring. The members of the Varsity team (photographed above) are:    

Seniors: Sarah Farrell, Emma Gibbons, Reese Will, Maureen Phelan, Taylor Montgomery, Miranda Kernaghan, Gianna Aregnano, Lucy Sanderson, Uma Padmanabhan

Juniors: Natalie Burrell, Adrienne Lazaro, Arianna Mijares, Samantha Ramos, Lee Quinn, Gianna Scotto, Charlie Wyke, Adrienne Winters, Aderinsola Adegboyega, Georgie Ford, Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, Remy Barrett 

Sophomores: Isabella Cooper, Michele John, Erin Olimpo, Evelyn Prendergast, Georgia Bartolo

Freshman: Daria Yohe, Emma Meng, Sophia Settelen

The team thanks Paula Soley, Hannah Farrell, Trey Entwistle, Jason Soley, Frank Farrell, Sarah Rossman '15, Erin Tiffany '13 and Annie Fowler '18 for all they do to contribute to the program's success. The team would also like to thank the school community for their whole-hearted response to our successes this season.