[caption id="attachment_20847" align="alignright" width="300"] ROBO-VICTORS — Members of the Robospartans pose with their trophies after last week’s robotics competition at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Marcy. Front row, from left: Ryan Payne, Kevin Valete and Gwyneth LaMarche; back row: Daniel Michaels, Douglas Hotvedt, Oscar Klempay, Matthew Strachen and Timothy Ha. (Photo submitted)[/caption]

The RoboSpartans FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) robotics team were victorious, winning top prizes from SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Excelsior Region Championship on Sunday, Jan. 17.

The team captained the Winning Alliance in the “FIRST Res-Q” challenge and won the top honor of the Inspire Award along with the Promote Award.

The Inspire Award is given to the team that embodies the “challenge” of the FTC Program, and the winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with “gracious professionalism” both on and off the playing field.

The Promote Award required the team to produce a 60 second promotional video using the theme “Now that I have succeeded in FIRST…” The RoboSpartans, with their robot, Laconicus, named after the last Spartan King, were seeded fourth at the end of five qualifying matches.

In a gutsy move, they declined an invitation to ally with the second seeded team for the finals and moved on to choose their own alliance that included a Rome team, Geared Up, and a Corning team, Gorillabots.

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