Grade 11 Mount Elizabeth high school student Tristan Hall has recently returned from Texas where he got a chance to rub shoulders with some serious
Hall was invited to represent Kitimat at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) World Championship Robotics Competition in Houston Texas. Hall went as one of eight students from Canada who won the Dean’s List Finalist Award. Hall also volunteered as a student ambassador at the event.
He is also an ‘Overseer’ with the school’s competitive robotics team; the Sentinels.
“We compete in FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) as Team #19769 - Sentinels,” wrote Krysta Peralto, FIRST Alum and Lead Mentor for the team.
“At the Provincial Championship in Surrey, the team won the Think Award for their ability to effectively communicate their engineering design process and 2nd place for the Connect Award for their connections to the STEM industry in the community. Tristan was a recipient of the Dean’s List Finalist Award recognizing him as a passionate student leader who showcases a highly technical skill set.”
“FIRST Tech Challenge is for students in grades 7 through 12 who compete 2v2 matches with remote-controlled robots on a 12ft by 12ft field,” wrote Peralto.
“Each year is a new game and this year it was called POWERPLAY where robots would interact with cones and score them on junctions of various heights to score points. The FIRST Championship includes all of the FIRST programs.”
The FIRST Championship robotics competition was held April 19-23. It is an annual competition that began in the 1990s. The event hosts more than 35,000 people, 20,000 of whom are students.
“We had people from all over the world coming to that one. We had some teams from Canada, we had some teams mostly from the US, but also people coming from Romania, Brazil, Israel,” said Hall. “There is this big lunch that we all go to. It’s a very formal event and we speak to the founder of FIRST. The person who started all of this robotics stuff, his name is Dean Kamen. His actual name is Dean, and they call it the Dean’s List, so it’s kind of a pun.”
Along with meeting fellow students from all over the world, Hall had the opportunity to network with industry professionals from organizations such as John Deere, the American Department of Defense, Disney and NASA.
“We got to interact with them, which was an amazing opportunity,” said Hall. “We got to show them the teams that they were sponsoring at the event. Got to take them out to all the different stuff, so that was fun.”
FIRST also offers scholarship opportunities and the chance to connect with representatives from universities such as MIT, Yale and McMaster.
“I’ve definitely learned a lot that I’m bringing back to the team from how other people operate,” said Hall.
Hall has been involved in robotics since the fifth grade when his Lego robot won him a Lego trophy at the World Robot Olympiad.