SouthCoast Robotics Team Wins District Championship

Congratulations to Team 586, a local, SouthCoast robotics team.

The interscholastic team, which is made up of students from New Bedford High School, Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School, and Dartmouth High School traveled to West Springfield for the New England First Championships, and went undefeated, winning it all.

The team competed at the Big E Coliseum against robotics teams that traveled from all over New England.  Each team had built a robot that was designed to play a robot version of basketball against other teams' robots.

Jack Kertscher, a Dartmouth High School student, is the lead programmer and operates the robot’s different arms and shooter during competition. Jack also served as captain of Dartmouth High's robotics team, which won $1,000 with support from Fun 107 last fall.

Kertscher says the team worked together since January to build the robot.

"What makes it tough is that the competition only tells us the challenge that we have to complete in early January. Then, we only have two or three months to build it."

The SouthCoast team rose to the challenge, with their $5,000 state-of-the-art robot winning all eight of their basketball games, eliminating teams from all over New England, to take the championship.

In addition to Kertscher, the team is made up of New Bedford Whaler Jonathan Lawrence, who is lead builder on the robot and runs the team’s pit crew. Cody Raposa, a Voc-Tech student from New Bedford, is the lead designer and the driver of this year's robot.

Team 5846's robot was part of a three-team alliance that won the championship banner, including partner teams from Windsor Locks, Connecticut, and Manchester, New Hampshire.

Congratulations to all three schools.