Bolles upper school FIRST® TECH Challenge teams Static Discharge and Mischievous Mechanics combined to tally not only the top score in the state of Florida, but also the highest score in the world at the Northeast Florida robotics Meet 1 Oct. 19.
The two teams worked together to earn an impressive 226, excelling during the 2024-25 FTC season. In fact, the top six scores in the world are held by Static Discharge and its randomly selected alliance partners during the competition. Bolles FTC teams Patent Pending and Jurassic Spark, comprised of middle school students, also competed in Meet 1, held at Atlantic Coast High School.
FTC students work together with their mentors to design and build robots to compete in a dynamic challenge released each September. Teams program classroom-scale robots to follow autonomous commands before student drivers take control in two-on-two matches. According to FIRST®, more than 87,400 students in Grades 7-12 competed in FTC in 67 countries during the 2022-2023 season.
Bolles upper school physics teacher Devan Skapetis and upper school fine arts teacher Chris Hicks coach all four Bolles robotics teams in the new Robotics Lab on the first floor of the Frank R. Sanchez & Hope and Dana E. Fender Center for Innovation.
Static Discharge team members include students Jayan Deshmukh, Rohan Deshmukh, Nishta Jijosh, Eesh Majithia, Jay Manohar and Meghanne Posick. Mischievous Mechanics team members include Jay Alanghat, Bowen Body, David Dong, Jake Kovacocy and Arnav Shah.
