BHS Robotics Team Wins Big

Posted onAuthorSusan Phy

Bensalem High School’s Robotics Team, The Fightin’ Robotic Owls, com­pet­ed at the FIRST Robotics District Competition at Hatboro-Horsham High School where they were event win­ners for the first time in team his­to­ry and took home two awards. Senior and Chief Engineer Justin Hawk says, “This has been an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence that I will nev­er for­get. It may have tak­en us five years, but it was worth the wait!”

The two awards the Owls took home were the Creativity Award spon­sored by Xerox and the Safety Award, spon­sored by Underwriters Laboratories.  The Creativity Award cel­e­brates cre­ativ­i­ty in design, use of com­po­nent, or strat­e­gy of play. They were giv­en this award for their idea of plac­ing the robot ver­ti­cal­ly to max­i­mize the amount of points their alliance could achieve. The Safety Award cel­e­brates the team that pro­gress­es beyond safe­ty fun­da­men­tals by using inno­v­a­tive ways to elim­i­nate or pro­tect against haz­ards. They were giv­en this award for con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ing excel­lence in safe­ty and for estab­lish­ing a safe­ty cul­ture with­in the STEM Lab at Bensalem High School and with­in the FIRST Mid-Atlantic com­mu­ni­ty. “This year was an espe­cial­ly unique one for our team. The look of awe as we set our robot on its side, or when we showed our safe­ty app to the judges. It was a nice con­trast to our upset last year. I am so hap­py that I was able to help con­tribute to this team’s suc­cess,” says junior Ethan Whiting, the team’s Drive Coach and Lead Safety Engineer. 

While the Owls are still fly­ing high from the suc­cess of their first com­pe­ti­tion, they have already begun prepar­ing for their sec­ond com­pe­ti­tion of the sea­son which takes place at Bensalem High School, March 30th-31st. Senior and Program Manager Katherine Matveykina says, “I am beyond proud of our team for all the progress we have made in this sea­son. Although this being our first year host­ing an event, the expec­ta­tion of mak­ing Bensalem proud is sure to boost our team’s con­fi­dence even more.” 

For more infor­ma­tion about the Bensalem District Event or to sign on as an event vol­un­teer or spon­sor, please vis­it http://team5401.org/fmaben/.