Students and Robots Take to the Courts in Competition
Student teams from California, Nevada, Brazil and Chile competed in the 21st annual Los Angeles regional FIRST competition this past weekend.
If you had chosen Cimarron Memorial High School, Orcutt  Academy High School and Dos Pueblos High School Engineering Academy as your top  picks in this past weekend's "Robotics March Madness Bracket," you would have been  right.The 21st season of the Los Angeles regional FIRST (For  Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition,  held at the Long Beach Convention Center on March 16 and 17, proved to be a  true battle of the minds. Sixty-six high school teams from California, Nevada,  Brazil and Chile battled on the courts with their student-designed robots for  the title of Regional Champions.The students from Cimarron Memorial High School, Las Vegas,  Nev.; Orcutt Academy High School, Orcutt, Calif.; and Dos Pueblos High School  Engineering Academy, Goleta, Calif., won the overall regional competition. Foshay  Learning Center, Los Angeles, won the coveted Regional Chairman's award, and Centinela  Valley Union High School District, Hawthorne, Calif., took home the Engineering  Inspiration award.The winners from this competition will represent the  Southern California region at the FIRST championships April 25 to 29 in St.  Louis, against 51,000 other students on more than 2,400 teams.The FIRST program was founded two decades ago in an effort  to encourage students to pursue careers in science and technology through  robotics competitions and with the help of engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion  Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; aerospace and other companies and institutions of  higher education. FIRST continues to grow and continues to inspire.For more information, visit:http://www.usfirst.org/.