McKenzie Robotics Team Wins Regional

McKenzie’s Team 1024, the Kil-a-bytes, won the Boilermaker Regional on March 21.  Despite finishing on Friday in last place, the McKenzie Team was joined by Team 292–PantherTech from Western High School and Team 868–the TechHounds from Carmel High School in the finals to win the event.  The win qualifies the teams to a spot at the Championship in Atlanta , Georgia .  The Championship is held in the Georgia Dome with 500+ high school teams from around the world and 10,000+ students.

The highlight of the Regional on  Friday was Ben Nelson, leader of the functional group, winning the $15,000 scholarship to Purdue.  Ben has been accepted into the engineering school in the Fall of 2009.  Ben is a student at McKenzie and Lawrence North High School .  Ben also interns at Aircom Engineering–one of the team sponsors.

The team is now working to build the funding for the trip to the championship.  The McKenzie team is coached by Jeff Smith and Mike Coffaro, Project Lead the Way instructors at McKenzie.  For more information about FIRST Robotics, see www.usfirst.org.