Mount Si Robotics Team Advances to World Championship

After performing well across the board and winning three awards at the British Columbia Provisional Championship held at Victoria, BC, on February 23rd, Mount Si High School’s Robotics Team Trinity qualified for the 2019 FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics World Championship.

Comprised of Mount Si High School juniors Acchindra Thev, Hari Rathnam and Manjesh Puram, and sophomore Zain Khaki, Team Trinity took home the Winning Alliance Captain Award, the Think Award, and the Inspire Award. The Think Award is given to the team that best reflects their ideas, season and journey through their engineering notebook, and the Inspire Award celebrates the pinnacle of FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) achievement.

Out of the 160+ teams from Washington and British Columbia which competed, Team Trinity was one of only nine teams to qualify for the FIRST World Championship, held in Houston from April 17th-20th.

Robotics clubs began in the Snoqualmie Valley back in 2008, with a team of ten Cascade View Elementary students participating in the after-school program. The programs then expanded into multiple FLL and FTC teams across the district, with many teams competing in state championships – and even winning a few awards along the way – but this will be the first time a team from the Snoqualmie Valley competes at the world championship.

The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a nonprofit designed to inspire young people to pursue science and technology, and to motivate them to pursue education and careers in STEM fields. Originally launched 30 years ago as an after school robotics activity for high school students, FIRST now includes four international programs for K-12 students. This year FIRST is made up of 72,000 teams consisting of more than 615,000 students across 90 countries.

Team Trinity will also be competing at The FIRST Washington State Championship on Sunday March 17th at Showare Center in Kent.

Congratulations, Team Trinity!