MadTown Robotics wins Quality Award

For The Madera Tribune

MadTown Robotics Team 1323 members pose at the F.I.R.S.T. Championship last week. The team received the Quality Award at the national engineering competition.

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Madera High School’s engineering club MadTown Robotics won the Motorola-sponsored Quality Award at the annual F.I.R.S.T. Championship last weekend. More than 15,000 students traveled to Houston, Texas, for the four-day event, which ended April 22.

Winning teams from F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Competition “F.I.R.S.T. Steamworks” and F.I.R.S.T. Tech Challenge “Velocity Vortex” faced off in high-energy match finals. MadTown Robotics’ Team 1323 competed in the Turing Subdivision.

The local team qualified for the contest by winning the sixth annual Central Valley Regional Robotics Competition in March as well as the Engineering Inspiration Award, which came with a $5,000 paid entry in the national competition at Houston.

“In a world unwinding, it’s critical to develop more kids with the toolset, the vision and the ability to work together to deal with difficult problems,” said F.I.R.S.T. founder Dean Kamen. “At FIRST, we inspire enthusiastic young people to learn, work hard and one day – change the world.”