Keep up the mid-season momentum!

We’re in the midst of our qualifying tournaments and there’s plenty more for teams to get involved in. Whether you’re preparing for champs or working to improve for next year, our 2023-24 Regional Motivate Award Winners are here to offer their advice to keep the momentum going!

HBK Robodeers – Hinchingbrooke School – UK-328

The HBK Robodeers won the Motivate Award again at their 2024-25 regional qualifying tournament

Hi everyone! We are the HBK Robodeers, the regional Motivate Award winners at last year’s competition in the East. We are a small team from Hinchingbrooke School in Huntingdon and have been competing in FIRST Tech Challenge UK since 2022. 

In our eyes, the Motivate Award is all about the communication and teamwork aspects of the competition and ensuring that you remain positive, even when things get tough. As a team of only four sixth-formers in last year’s competition, we felt the struggles of time, budget and organisation, but sticking together as a team helped us overcome all those obstacles and become very competitive at the regional qualifiers.

Another big part of the Motive Award is spreading awareness of the competition in your local community and encouraging others to get involved in STEM. We have been really focused on the growth of our team, trying to widen participation from people outside of the sixth form and make the club a place where everyone can learn about robotics, not just people with prior experience. There are lots of things you can do to get people involved, maybe open events where people can ask questions and see the robot in action, or a competition where people can take the robot for a test drive! 

Whatever you decide to do, the important thing is that it’s fun and engaging to get people excited about robotics – and that you have fun, too! Finally, we wish you all the best of luck in this year’s competition, and who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next Motivate Award winners!

Octacore – St John Fisher Catholic College – UK-032

Octacore cheering on their school’s other team, Circuit Breakers

We’re Octacore, a team of students from St John Fisher Catholic College. It’s our second season competing and we can’t wait to see how our journey progresses. As winners of the Motivate Award during our rookie year, we hope to share some useful advice! 

A large part of winning the Motivate Award was organising outreach events and sharing what FIRST is all about. For example, we planned a robot design competition with the year 7s at our school which allowed us to speak about the challenge, talk about our personal experiences and share our love for STEM with others. We aimed it particularly toward a younger audience, hoping to spark some curiosity in them and show that STEM is something which anyone can pursue. We believe it was very successful as lots of students were super eager about it and we received some great designs. 

Top tip: Ensure that when you plan these events, you consider who you’re aiming it towards and how you can engage your audience in a way that will suit them! This season, we have plans in place to share our passion for STEM with a wider audience by going to primary schools and care homes. 

A significant part of winning the award is about outreach, but it’s also about your attitude on the day. A large part of why we won the Motivate Award was simply our enthusiasm, support towards other teams and Gracious Professionalism by doing things such as cheering during matches or lending some equipment. Especially during a competition where anything can happen, you have to stay resilient and have a positive attitude!

Delphinus – Nonsuch High School for Girls – UK-110

Team Delphinus winning the 2023-24 Regional Motivate Award for the South East

We are Team Delphinus, a multi-year team from Nonsuch High School for Girls. Now in our third year of competing, we’ve learnt a plethora of invaluable skills from the challenge. By working as a team, we have innovated ideas, elevated our passion for robotics, and created robots we are incredibly proud of!

Last season, we dedicated ourselves to reaching out to as many teams as possible to share the joy we experienced working together on the CENTERSTAGE challenge, in addition to visiting a local primary school to engage younger children in STEM and encourage them to explore their interests in the field. We even came up with a chant for our alliances to encourage Gracious Professionalism alongside a competitive spirit!

We also encouraged and inspired others to explore STEM and robotics through our Women in STEM Instagram series, and so we were honoured to have won the Motivate Award. All our hard work culminated in an amazing award that made us all proud!

Finally, for teams aspiring to win the Motivate Award this season, consider the prevalence of STEM in your school and wider community and what you can do to spark a passion for robotics in others.

Team Delphinus wishes all the teams the best of luck this season – robotics is a place for learning and improving, so always try your hardest, learn something new, and remember, it’s More Than Robots!

Think you could support a team that inspires their community too? Join the movement!