The 2018 FIRST World Championships were held at the George R. Brown Convention Center, Minute-Maid Park, and Discovery Green in Houston, Texas between April 18 and April 22.

This four-day event is one of the largest events in the world to celebrate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for students. Nearly 700 robotics teams with over 15,000 students, aging from 6 to 18 years, from 43 countries competed and exhibited their innovation skills in FIRST’s four programs, FRC, FTC, FLL, and FLL Jr categories.

The finals of the FTC Relic Recovery game were played in front of thousands of FIRST fans, teams at the Minute-Maid Park. In the closely fought finals, a local Bellevue team, Team 12611 TechNova affiliated with NWCS Robotics Club from Bellevue emerged victorious.

They were part of the winning alliance that comprised of 3 Teams – (Team 7750 – M&M’s, Sutherlin, Oregon; Team 724 – RedNek Robotics Wun, Sun River, Montana; and Team 12611, TechNova, Bellevue, Washington). This is the first time a Washington State team has won the FTC Championships!

The Team is primarily comprised of middle, high school kids with 7 girls from Tyee Middle School, Bellevue (Tyee), Inglewood Middle School, Sammamish (Inglewood) and Newport High School, Bellevue. (NHS).

The team members along with their schools are – Alex Qiu (NHS), Hannah Wang (NHS), Diana Ouyang (NHS), Anushka Varma (NHS), Sriya Bulusu (Tyee), Allyson Graylin (NHS), Emma Shi (Inglewood), Ameraie Jacinto (NHS). The team’s major sponsors are – Entomo, E2Open, UroViu, Expedia, T-Mobile, Microsoft, Northwest Chinese School.

Winning Alliance. Photos courtesy of TechNova