West Windsor-Plainsboro High Schools North and South FIRST Robotics
Team 1923 Wins the 2011 Northeast Utilities Connecticut Regional
MidKnight Inventors also pick up two additional awards
West Windsor an
d Plainsboro, NJ – April 2, 2011 – The West Windsor‐Plainsboro Regional School District’s FIRST Robotics Team 1923, with students from High School North and High School South, won the prestigious Northeast Utilities FIRST Connecticut Regional Robotics Competition in Hartford, CT on Saturday, April 2nd. This year’s regional competition featured 58 teams of students, teachers and mentors from the United States and Brazil. The “MidKnight Inventors,” who were 15 and 1 over the two-day competition known as “the varsity sport for the mind,” entered the elimination rounds as the tournament’s number one seeded team. Team 1923 selected two Connecticut teams, The Techno-Nuts (Team 155: Berlin) and The Cyber Knights (Team 195: Southington), as Alliance Partners for the Championship 
rounds.
In addition to winning the Robotics Competition, The MidKnight Inventors also came away with two major non-competition awards. Team 1923 won the Gracious ProfessionalismTM Award Sponsored by Johnson & Johnson which celebrates outstanding sportsmanship and continuous “Gracious Professionalism” in the heat of competition, both on and off the playing field. The Team also won the CoopertitionTM Award celebrating the team that best demonstrates the ability to help their opponents compete throughout the entire competition. “The FIRST Robotics Competition is about much more than just building a robot,” said Michael Stevens, one of the adult volunteer team mentors for the MidKnight Inventors. “The entire West Windsor and Plainsboro communities should be proud of how their sons and daughters unselfishly helped many other teams – including those we were directly competing against – field the best possible robot they could. ”
Want to know how they build the robot? In early January 2011, the MidKnight Inventors and all other teams received a common kit of parts from FIRST to build a robot with no instructions. Jason Marcus, a senior at High School North and co‐captain, explained, “The team along with the volunteer mentors had six weeks to design, build, program, and test a robot to meet this season’s engineering challenge, LogoMotionTM.” The 2011 game is played on a 27 by 54-foot field and each match lasts 135 seconds. Each three-team alliance uses their 120-pound remote controlled robots to place colored inner tubes on a scoring grid nearly 10 feet high to form as many FIRST logos as possible in the time allotted. The further up on the post the robots hang their pieces, the more points the teams score. In the final 10 seconds of each match, additional points are scored by having a mini-robot, deployed from the team’s larger robot quickly climb a ten-foot metal tower pole before the final buzzer.
For the first time, the West Windsor and Plainsboro communities were able to watch the MidKnight Inventors build their robot thanks to the generosity of Windsor Plaza Redevelopment by Cyzner Properties who donated a storefront in the former ACME shopping center to the team for eight weeks. Through the support of the West Windsor‐Plainsboro Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization, the team received generous grants from Bristol‐Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk, and Ortho‐McNeil‐Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. Additional sponsors were Bank of America, MIM Software, and Montessori Connection, as well as a number of local businesses and individuals.
By winning at the regional level, the MidKnight Inventors have qualified for the international FIRST Robotics Competition Championships to be held in St. Louis, MO beginning April 28th. “We need the help of the West Windsor and Plainsboro communities to raise money to attend this competition,” explained Kelsey Stevens, a junior at WW-P High School North and co-captain of the MidKnight Inventors. “We are going to try to raise enough money for our team and for two inner‐city teams from New York City, so that these students can participate as well.”
You can help us “Engineer Success”
There are several easy ways that you can make a donation to the Team:
- Write a check payable to “WWPHSN Robotics” and mail in care of WWP High School North, 90 Grovers Mill Road, Plainsboro, NJ 08536. Donations to public schools are tax-exempt. EIN: 22-1893736
- If you prefer to donate to IRS 501(c)(3) charitable organizations, please make your check payable to the WW-P Education Foundation* and designate it for WWP FRC Team 1923. All donations are tax-exempt to the fullest extent of the law. You will receive confirmation of your gift. Mail to: WW-P Education Foundation, PO Box 280, Princeton Junction, NJ 08850-0280. EIN 22-3441000
- You can donate through the WW-P Education Foundation’s web site at www.wwpeducationfoundation.org. Again, please designate your gift for WWP FRC Team 1923.
* The WW-P Education Foundation, Inc. accepts donations for FIRST Robotics Team 1923, and is registered with most corporate matching gift programs in the area. Please follow directions in #2 above, and also either enclose your employer’s matching gift form or complete the forms online, if available. For more information, visit www.wwpeducationfoundation.org or email them at info@wwpeducationfoundation.org.
