By: Mr Benyamin (Staff Advisor for the Robotics Team)

This year was the seventh consecutive season for FIRST Team 1219 and it was a very busy and exciting year for everyone. For the past few years, our team has been competing at two levels. In the fall, we compete in IFI VEX Robotics which are small robots with dimensions of 18"x18"x18" played on a 12'x12' field with two teams consisting of two robots each. During the fall of 2009, we built three of these small robots and competed in two tournaments, the Toronto Championship at Woburn Collegiate Institute and the Southern Ontario Championship at Governor Simcoe Secondary School in St. Catherines. In both tournaments, we played in elimination matches after several rounds of qualifying matches but were not able to go beyond quarter-final play. 

In addition to competing ourselves as a team, we have been invited to host FIRST Lego League tournaments for middle and elementary school students in the western part of the city for the last three years. This year's event was at the end of November and it once again gave us an opportunity to showcase our school and its science, math and technology program (Cyberscience) along with the accomplishments of the robotics team. By hosting this event, we hope to attract the interest of these younger students to continue with robotics when they go to high school. We also hosted the FIRST Tech Challenge in February which is a competition for high school students. Our team was also represented at events when parents and students visited our school.

Overall, we had an exciting school year and plans are already in place for robotics to continue at our school again during 2012-2013. Many of our experienced team members will be graduating but we have a very enthusiastic group of grade 9, 10 and 11 students who are more than willing to take on the challenges of competition next year. We also hope to recruit many new students who will be joining us in September for grade 9 to begin their secondary school studies.