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All three HSD high schools competed at the upcoming FIRST Robotics Competition, FRC, St. Louis regional event March 14 – 16 at the Chaifetz Arena and two schools took home honors.

Hazelwood Central High School was represented by the RoboHawks and won the Individual Design Award, Hazelwood East High School was represented by the Tech Titans and Hazelwood West High School was represented by the Shrapnel Sergeants. Hazelwood West qualified for the world championships

The competition marked the return of a HEHS robotics team.  While the Tech Titans were new this year, they were excited to compete.

Tyler Chavers, a ninth-grade student at HEHS, said that while their inexperience may be viewed as a disadvantage, the Tech Titans have a lot to offer to the competition.

“I think one of our biggest challenges will be that the other teams have been through this before, and know some ins and outs that we don’t,” said Chavers. “But we really work well together and that is one of our major strengths. I’m excited to showcase our teamwork.”

This year the FRC game was called Ultimate Ascent. It is played by two competing alliances on a flat, 27 by 54 foot field. Each alliance consists of three robots. The robots compete to get as many discs into their goals as they can during a two minute and fifteen second match. The match ends with robots attempting to climb pyramids located near the middle of the field. Each robot earns points based on how high it climbs the pyramid. The robots cannot be more than 112 inches in perimeter, no more than 84 inches in height and cannot weigh more than 120 pounds.

All three teams hoped to advance to the final FRC competition to be held in April at the Edward Jones Dome.

Recently, the RoboHawks and the Shrapnel Sergeants  also competed at the FIRST Technical Challenge, FTC, championship competition on the campus of Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. While neither team placed at the event, both teams enjoyed their participation and viewed it as practice for the FRC event.