Ten student members of the HAX Robotics team represented Loomis Chaffee at the Connecticut FIRST Tech Robotics State Championship on Saturday, February 22 in Windsor, Conn. The contest featured 24 qualified teams of students in grades 7–12 in a head-to-head competition to design, build, program, and maneuver robots following a specific course of action.

Jen Solomon, associate director of the Pearse Hub for Innovation (PHI), who is a faculty advisor of robotics, noted that the Loomis team turned in a very good showing at Saturday’s championship event. After winning three of their five qualifying matches, earning sixth place overall out of 24 teams, Team HAX advanced to the semifinal round where they were selected to form an alliance with teams from Glastonbury and Middletown, she said. Their winning run ended with a defeat in the semifinal round.

Team HAX came away with the Think Award which recognizes how a team documents, in writing, the underlying science and mathematics of their robot design, games strategies, successes, and opportunities for improvement in an Engineering Notebook. The Think Award is the second-most prestigious award in the competition according to Jen, who adds that earning such an award is “certainly a testament to our stellar writing program at Loomis!”