Naz Robotics score state title

Nazareth Robotics team#16617 won the state title at the UIL1-4 Division on Thursday. The meet featured 24 1A-4A teams from the five Texas areas. The event was held at the Cadence Bank Center in Belton.

Members of the team are Spencer Acker, Oliver Meador, Sara Prins, Gracie Raef, Olivia Raef, Adrian Rios, and Pierce Wilhelm. The team is coached by Robert O’Connor.

The team went four and one in the preliminaries; Bushland team #19955 selected the Naz team to join their alliance as a first pick and it was accepted. Bushland’s second pick was Laredo team #18908. The teams won the rest of the competition.

Together with Bushland, Nazareth had the highest non-penalty score of their division, with a 267. The highest score of all divisions (5A & 6A) was 282.

The state win was followed up by the FIRST state competition for two days where the best teams in Texas competed against one another regardless of school size to be the best of the best from the five Texas areas with 19 advancing from Central, 12 from East, 17 from North, 10 from South and 14 from W&P.

Teams were judged on spoken presentation, engineering portfolio and competitive success on the field, with 12 teams out of the 72 advancing to the FIRST World Championship. Nazareth was sixth in this competition.