BY WENDI REARDON PRICE
Clarkston News Staff Writer
The Clarkston First Tech Challenge FIRST robotics teams are heading to the state playoffs this weekend in Battle Creek.
The Clarkston Robowolves were one of the first teams to qualify for the state competition while they were at a meet in Marysville.
They finished in first place out of a field of 36 teams after playing five qualifying matches. Then, led an alliance to win the competition.
“It’s awesome,” said Dale Schnepp, one of the mentors for the Robowolves. “It’s a great opportunity. The kids are excited. The mentors are excited. We played in Marysville a couple weeks ago and took first place that’s how we qualified for states.”
The object of this year’s game is to shoot whiffle balls into the hoppers, which are baskets. They also lift larger balls into the hoppers while four robots, two red robots and two blue robots, are out in the field.
The teams also get points for pushing buttons on the beacons, which are pads on the outer edge of the field. Pushing the button lights up the pad randomly to blue or red light.
Schnepp explained the first 30 seconds of the game is when the teams score a lot of their points.
Recently all five of the Clarkston First Tech Challenge FIRST robotics teams, from sixth through eighth grade, competed at FTC competition in Howell with 31 other teams, Dec. 3
“It is really cool to have so many Clarkston teams there,” said Kyle Hughes, coach and mentor for Team RUSH 27, the high school’s robotics team.
“Having five teams is pretty high for a school system,” Schnepp added. “I don’t know any other school system who has that many.”
Each team played five qualifying matches. Teams Jr RUSH6, No. 7693; rookie team Clarkston Grease Wolves, No. 11637; Clarkston Robowolves, No. 10016, finished in fifth, sixth and seventh place.
The success for Jr RUSH 6 qualified them for state playoffs.
Jr RUSH6 and Robowolves were selected by the second ranked team No Limits, No. 8593, to form an alliance for the playoffs.
“The playoffs were intense with each team winning one match,” Schepp shared. “Fortunately they prevailed and won the final match making them the Howell Qualifying Winning Alliance.”
The Clarkson Crew, No. 7688, was selected by the fourth ranked team for the semi-finals. The alliance was eliminated during the playoffs.
Over 50 in FTC move on to the state competition and win awards.
David Gerst, a mentor, explained this year there are 60 wild card spots for the world competition. “Our ratio is pretty good this year,” he added.
Schnepp and Gerst added this year they had more females participate with over a 50 percentage across all five teams, which was a goal to have more females involved in the robotics teams and engineering.
“It’s a direct effect of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts,” said Gerst. “They get them into engineering with the Holiday Lights Parade. It allows younger kids to get their engineering badges. Even though we build robots we are more about building students into adults.”
Schnepp added a special thanks to Team RUSH 27 for providing a workshop, robot hardware, laptops and mentoring assistance for the Clarkston FTC teams.

  FIRST, Robotics