Westford Academy's Ghost Robotics Team- CONGRATULATIONS!
WA Ghost Robotics Team
Making it to the Massachusetts State Championship is a huge accomplishment within FIRST Robotics. Westford Academy's Ghost Robotics team worked long and hard to out-strategize and out-score over a hundred teams from across the state, constantly improving their robot to keep it a top scorer at scrimmages and qualifiers rescheduled or held remote due to COVID. At this thirty-two team championship, our rag-tag team 3565 demonstrated gracious professionalism, consistently earning respect from top-ranked and well-funded teams including Andover, Beverly, Brookline, Lexington, Shrewsbury and Weston. Teams sought us out for our technical prowess and competitive advantage in strategic alliances.
Notable items at this state championship event...
Juniors Nakul Joshi and Kaushik Reddy were recognized as Semi-Finalists for FIRST's Dean's List Award having been nominated by the team for their outstanding contributions, personal technical expertise and accomplishments to the team and community.
Lead Coach and Mentor, Jeff Warren was nominated for the Compass Award for his outstanding guidance and support. Recognition from his leading last year's team of six to States was a key success factor in more than sixty students wanting to be part of this season's team. Jeff taught classes on CAD, mentored the team in engineering and coached students to resurrect the school's 3-D printer lab. (The short video the team submitted is at 3565 Ghost Robotics Compass Award Nomination - YouTube )
3565 Ghost Robotics Compass Award Nomination
Every team saw WA Ghost Robotics Team 3565 achieve the highest score of the morning Qualifiers and was talking about it over lunch.
WA Ghost Robotics was chosen to be an alliance partner in the final matches.
In the final match, the three-team alliance with WA Ghost Robotics' won, and each of these top three teams was awarded trophies for the Tournament Winning Alliance - this highly coveted award is the highest award ever achieved by the team in its nine-year history!
Moving forward...
FIRST Partners informs us to stay prepared for more events and the Ghost Robotics team plans community outreach programs for elementary schools and a summer program for town residents. Last year the team visited three elementary schools to help promote STEM by giving over one hundred and fifty students a learning experience of seeing the robot in action.
Special thanks...
The team extends a special thanks to all the support Dean of Stucents, Betsy Murphy has given us this season. The growth of our team has strained resources and she has been a huge help working with us to find space, better manage finances and be our liaison to other groups within the school.
Sincerely,
Steve Wojcik and Jeff Murphy
WA Ghost Robotics Lead Coaches and Mentors