St. Patrick to host First Tech Challenge Tournament Saturday, Jan. 13

St. Patrick Catholic High School will welcome 20 teams from throughout the state during the Gulf Coast FTC Qualifying Tournament on Saturday, January 13 from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.

St. Patrick is the only Catholic school from the Biloxi Diocese that will participate. Other schools include Biloxi Junior High, West Harrison, Gautier, Pascagoula, Gulfport middle schools, Long Beach, Brandon, and Homeschool teams and many more.

The robot acts as a bridge between the LEGO and the top level of FIRST Robotics Challenge. This robot is 18 inches in height and width at the start of the game, and it may extend during the game with a robotic arm.

The FTC challenge this year is Relic Recovery, where teams will have to program robots to recover as many relics from the playing field as possible and place them in designated areas. The first 30 seconds of the game is autonomous and the remaining one minute and 30 seconds will be operated by team drivers.

Every team creates a strategy to design their robot to collect as many relics for points as possible. The robot is programmed by the students to complete these missions. There are four teams at the playing field at once: two on a red alliance and two on a blue alliance. Teams will be matched randomly as they compete throughout the day.

Teams can advance from a qualifying tournament to the state tournament, which will be held at Ole Miss on February 17, 2018. St. Patrick Catholic High School Robotics Team Tempest hosted a Build Day in October so that teams could meet and work together on strategies and techniques for building robots just after the game challenge was released. From the Build Day, teams brought back ideas and strategies to continue through build season on their own robots.

Stop by from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. to watch these robots in action!