Calgary FIRST Robotics Competition team recognized for community impact

Calgary robotics team Sparkans 9277 is back after competing in the world championship in Houston, reflecting on their experience learning and competing.

STEM Innovation Academy has only had a FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team for four years, but it’s already being recognized for the impact it’s having in its community.

Its FRC team is called Sparkans 9277, and it was chosen as one of six finalists at the world event in Houston, Texas, in the first week of May.

The students earned their first trip to worlds by winning a FIRST Impact Award at a regional competition in Utah.

FRC mentor Jaime Kochan says more than 2,000 teams submit to regional competitions all over the globe and that it’s the first time an Alberta team has placed so high.

“The Impact Award is about all of the outreach that the students do,” said Kochan.

“So it involves many different things; some of it is STEM outreach, some of it is robotics outreach, so students going into the community and actually getting (other) students involved in robotics and showing them what can be done in terms of coding, etc., and some of it’s to do with (electronics) recycling.”

Kochan says typically, teams who make the finals have been around for more than 10 years, so for the Sparkans to achieve that in four years is incredible.

“We were over the moon; it was so exciting. The kids were ecstatic,” she said.

“All of the impact stuff they do is outside of school, so it’s their weekends, it’s when they have a PD day, it’s when they have time off in the evening. We have a number of our students mentoring some teens upstairs in our junior high and just trying to spread robotics and what it can mean to students and trying to get them more involved in coding, science, STEM education.”

All the students on the team work on a number of aspects, from building the robot to fundraising.

Reese Burwell, a Grade 12 student, focused on building the Impact Award submission with a handful of other team members.

“The Impact Award is considered the most prestigious award in FIRST,” she said.

“I genuinely don’t think I’ve come down from that feeling still (of winning); it was amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. Three people—we’re the impact team—we did the presentation, but it’s our entire team that did the outreach; it’s our entire team that works toward these goals.”

Henock Seife, also a Grade 12 student, is the team captain and main driver of the robot.

He also narrated the short submission video the team put together.

“Many students (participated in) these outreach events and impact initiatives that actually led us to winning those awards,” he said.

“And when we got those trophies and banners, it really just said to us, ‘What you’re doing is right, and you should keep running with it.’”

Lachlan Paulhus, a Grade 12 student as well, says the Sparkans’ robot actually held its own at the competition, where it had to collect balls and shoot them into a target.

“We used a lot of new technologies that we hadn’t used before, especially with vision and localization and how the robot sees and detects where it is on the field,” he said.

“And the software this year was much more advanced than previous years.”

Paulhus says the trip to worlds is an inspiration for everyone at the school.

“As the first team from Alberta ever to go this far at worlds, I think it really shows how much of a FIRST powerhouse Alberta is,” he said.

“Three teams from Calgary alone went to worlds (Forge Robotics 4421 and Yellowjackets 9449), which was one of the most successful regions from around the world, and Alberta is really showing that it’s a STEM powerhouse.”

The students say this will now motivate them to do even more in their community.