Immaculata robotics team super-charged at world competition

Robotics club members from Immaculata High School showed some Jersey moxie during a recent world championship in Texas. The Somerville Catholic high school’s “Team 1279 Cold Fusion” ranked 73rd amongst 600 competitors from around the world in the 2024 FIRST Robotics Competition held April 17-20 in the George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston.

“Qualifying is a big thing,” asserted Andrew Simon, moderator of the eight-member club and physics/engineering teacher in the Somerset County school. “All the other schools in the competition took along 50 kids and had 10 times the budget. But the important thing is what our kids had between their ears.”

The FIRST Robotics Competition is a unique mix of sport, science and technology, with teams of students designing, building and testing their academic skills by constructing a robot destined for competition. Immaculata’s build season runs from early January to late February, meeting three hours per day, four days per week, and six hours on Saturdays. Wood, metal, electronics and wiring are assembled by the students and tested by the work of their peers during competitions in March and April.

The journey to the world competition in Houston was preceded by competitions in Mount Olive, Warren Hills, and a Mid-Atlantic District championship at Pennsylvania’s Lehigh University. Simon detailed a particularly difficult day in Warren Hills when, though nothing seemed to go as planned, challenges tested the mettle of the young IHS club members and found them worthy.

“They overcame a lot of adversity, obstacles and roadblocks to achieve [second place],” he recalled. “Everything went wrong – we had wiring issues, student illness and low team morale. Any other team would have given up, but our kids did not. They never complained, blamed, or gave up.”

Simon detailed the team’s “stellar” results at the Mid-Atlantic District championship in an email to the school and supporters, noting Cold Fusion had finished in the top eight of 60 teams. “Our team was one of only 600 out of almost 10,000 from around the world invited to compete,” he proudly announced.  “Our Mid-Atlantic District only sent 22 out of the 128 teams comprising it. We finished ranked 22 out of 128.”

Immaculata ranked third amongst Catholic schools in the entire Mid-Atlantic; second amongst New Jersey Catholic schools, and the first-ranked Catholic co-ed school in the state. Including the Houston competition, Team 1279 Cold Fusion was 24-34-0 in 2024 official play.

This year’s FIRST Robotics competition, entitled “Crescendo,” pitted two alliances of three teams against opponents competing to score or play notes in each of three field elements: amplify their speaker, get on stage or harmonize in the spotlight before time runs out. Giant rings are hurled toward a target by the robot; the human player also lends his or her skill to help the team amass points. Livestreaming from the Houston convention center revealed hundreds of young competitors cheering on their multicolored creations with decibels rivaling a rock concert.

Simon, an IHS 2017 alumnus, recalled his days in the club and said the skills he and current members gained went beyond proficiency in the STEM realm. “It goes beyond STEM. It teaches self-confidence, teamwork, time management and a sense of belonging; we would take and all students that were interested,” he said. “It’s a lot more than building a robot, and they can be an ambassador to other teens.”

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Team members’ reflections
 

Being a part of team 1279 Cold Fusion for three seasons has been an incredible experience for me. Creativity and outside the box thinking is an important part of the robotics process because each season we, as a team, need to design and build a robot to complete the various objectives for the competition that season. During build seasons, I have gained valuable experience working with tools, sharpened my problem-solving skills, and learned the value of cooperation, teamwork, and strong leadership from my mentors and teammates each season. During my time on the team I developed more effective communication, improved my time management skills, and increased my confidence, even taking on a role as co-captain of the team as a junior. Being confident in my abilities and knowledge is something that will greatly impact my life as a student and help me to succeed in whatever future path I take. I am very grateful for Team 1279 Cold Fusion! Arianna Sviderskis-Carroll, junior 

We are first year robotics members. Together we have learned many skills by competing in robotics. The first one, obviously, being robotics. From using tools to organizing them, we learned quite a lot of useful workshop skills. Other related skills would be teamwork, geometry, and strategy. We, in competing, have learned a big lesson that will help us through even more than our academic career. We learned to respect our competitors. In competitions our competitors from one round will become our allies in the next, so we must be well mannered to everyone at all times.  Erikson Wadehn, freshman, and Max Wadehn, junior

Participating in Immaculata Robotics Team 1279 Cold Fusion has sharpened my problem solving skills, enhanced my communication skills, taught me the importance of time management skills and organization, as well as provided the ability to work with a team. Mr. Simon supports all the students and keeps our energy hype. Shout out Mr. Simon for giving inspirational speeches that make the team and I never give up. The lessons taught by my mentors and FIRST robotics will undoubtedly help me through my academic life as well as future jobs. Ava Marie Sviderskis-Carroll, freshman

The skills that I gained in robotics taught me so much about fostering meaningful relationships and gaining insight into the intricate world of mechanics. The collaborative atmosphere allows me to embrace creativity and share unforgettable moments together. Despite facing stressful moments and heartbreaking losses, these experiences have taught me to push even harder every time we fell down, striving for victory even when so many things went wrong. Robotics is not just a club, but an experience that completely altered my perspective on life, showing me that nothing is truly impossible. Will Cantono, sophomore

Through robotics I’ve sharpened several skills including teamwork, use of electronics, coding, and use of tools. Some lessons I’ve learned include how to work as a team, how to manage time and projects, and I’ve gained a better sense of responsibility. Joseph Khan, junior

I have sharpened my skills in critical and fast thinking as we have had to think of many different designs for the robot and if we didn’t like a design, we had to change it fast in order to meet the deadline. Joseph Khan, junior

 
Although there are many skills that robotics has sharpened for me so far, one that has been improved most drastically is being able to break down building a project into smaller tasks. This helps strongly since the robots we build are very complicated and have a lot of parts. This also helps outside of robotics. For example, when doing a research paper in one of my classes, I can break every part of the paper down to its simplest tasks and complete each task while still keeping the bigger picture in mind. One lesson that I have learned from robotics that I now apply in every part of my life is the idea of drawing something out first. In robotics, after you have an idea the first thing you need to do is create a preliminary sketch before moving forward to thinking about the details of the design. Although I don't sketch out a picture of what my day will look like, getting an early idea of what it might entail and my schedule in my head before I go to school helps both my memory for what I need to do and makes me more prepared for anything that might surprise me during my day. This helps in school a lot, especially when I have a mental "sketch" of what my classes might entail that day and when I might have extra free time to complete other work. Matthew Stevens, junior