Congratulations to the Nut Jobs, Broadalbin-Perth High School’s robotics team, which took home the Motivate Award at its first tournament of the season, held Dec. 14 at Kingston High School.
Competing against 19 other teams, the Nut Jobs also won second place in the Connect Award category. Their next tournament will be Jan. 18 at Albany Academy for Girls, where they hope to do well enough to advance to regionals.
“We are in a new region this year, and the competition is high,” Nut Jobs coach (and first-grade teacher at The Learning Community) Jill Becker said. “But we think we have a good chance.”
Established in 2014, the Nut Jobs are part of FIRST Tech Challenge, an organization that challenges its members to design, build, program and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format.
Guided by adult coaches and mentors, students develop STEM skills and practice engineering principles while learning about innovation and teamwork.
The Motivate Award celebrates the team that “represents the essence of the FIRST Tech Challenge competition through gracious professionalism and general enthusiasm for the overall philosophy of FIRST and what it means to be a FIRST Tech Challenge Team,” according to the FIRST game manual. The Connect Award is given to the team that most connects with their local science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) community.