WHS Sophomores Win MA State Title at Robotics Competition

Weston 10th graders take Massachusetts state title at robotics competition.

Weston’s GNCE FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team will represent Massachusetts at world championships in April.

Making Weston history, a group of eight WHS sophomores earned a ticket to the 2022 World Championship for FIRST robotics.  The team advanced this month during the MA State Championships for First Tech Challenge (FTC) by winning the championship match in an intense battle between four robots attempting to complete different complex tasks during an autonomous and driver controlled period.

In addition to being crowned the Team Captain of the Winning Alliance at the state championship, GNCE was also awarded the top engineering design THINK award by the judges for their unique 3D printed carbon fiber robot.

Alex Ko, Arjun Jasuja, Ellie Tillman-Schwartz, Finley Campbell, Sam Atefi, TJ Dahl, Zach Kano, and Zack Gumbert have been robotics enthusiasts since they were in 6th grade at Weston Middle School. Many of them participated in WMS Robotics’ FIRST Lego League (FLL) teams. Team GNCE previously qualified for the FLL world championships as 8th graders but were unable to attend after the event was cancelled due to COVID.  They coined their name as a team while at WMS as GNCE, short for Galactic Narwhal Chicken Effect.

Last fall the GNCE team members, with the support of Mr. Dan Taylor at WMS, also successfully restarted and assembled two new WMS teams. GNCE volunteers then spent weeknights mentoring the middle school teams throughout the fall.

The FIRST World Championship will take place on April 20-23rd in Houston, TX. They are one of only 160 FTC teams from around the world who qualified to participate this year.

Team GNCE with their robot and trophies at the Mass state FTC robotics championships. From
left to right, Sam Atefi, Mentor Cary Gumbert, Alex Ko, Zack Gumbert, Arjun Jasuja, Ellie Tillman-Schwartz, Zach Kano, TJ Dahl, and Finley Campbell.