The Bucksport High School robotics team won worldwide recognition in its past two seasons and is on track to do so again this year.
Team 6329, “The Bucks’ Wrath,” started its playoff season last weekend and beat out 30 regional competitors, winning 16 matches and losing only one. Competing in an “alliance” with two other teams, Bucksport students won the overall competition in Falmouth.
A prediction site for high school robotics teams, Statbotics, now ranks the Bucksport group first in the country and second out of 3,723 teams in the entire world.
That system should be taken with a grain of salt and doesn’t guarantee a championship, according to Seth Laplant, one of the adults who mentors the team. But it does show that the growing team has brought big recognition to the Maine town and that it is on track to compete at the highest level again this year, led by a younger group of players who were excited by the weekend’s wins.
“Over the past two years, it’s really become the pride of the town of Bucksport and the school,” Laplant said.
The team’s success is notable, given that it’s from a small community with fewer resources than some of its competitors. It has also been a relief for the team, demonstrating that its newer members are ready to continue the legacy of their predecessors.
The current team has attracted 30 students, with a core group of sophomores, and 10 mentors that include team alumni.
“To say I am proud of what this young group has already accomplished is an understatement,” head coach and mentor John Boynton said. “There was a ton of pressure to step into new leadership roles while still maintaining the high expectations put on this team, and they most certainly delivered.”
The program started in 2017 and grew in 2019 when a school alumnus gave $250,000 to the school for science, technology, engineering and math education, which allowed the team to buy new machinery to create robots. Its competitions are organized by FIRST Robotics, a nonprofit that holds such events for kids ages 4 to 18 to grow their interest in STEM topics.
In 2023, the Bucksport team won third place at the world competition in Houston, Texas, and it returned last year to take home second in its field, a lower level in the bracket-like system. Maine has 25 high school robotics teams listed in FIRST competitions, including one in Brewer, which competed in an alliance with Bucksport this weekend.
The playoff season runs for six weeks, followed by district and world competitions for teams that qualify. Bucksport’s team started designing, building and programming its robot in early January this year.
Laplant said the team tends to move through those parts of the process more quickly than competitors, leaving students more time to practice driving the robot through tasks.
“Our new drive team had a really solid start, and definitely one of the fastest robots and drive teams out there currently, from what we’re seeing,” he said.
The team has been ranked in the top 10 in the past by the Statbotics scoring system, which uses numerous factors, including past performance, to predict how many points a team will earn. Those calculations can be complicated, but the team’s new ranking shows they’re scoring quickly, working accurately and are near the top of the field, Laplant said.
Each competition starts with a 15-second period where the robot operates on its own before the students take over with controllers to lead it through the game. This year, the game includes the robot placing balls on PVC pipe “branches” and driving up onto a steel cage.
Students are involved in driving the robot, passing items to it, servicing it during the competition, making strategic decisions, fundraising and media promotion. The team films and posts videos of the process and some competitions – which is important, because the game can be hard to understand on paper but draws viewers in when it can be watched.
“It’s a very complex game,” Laplant said. “Watching it, it’s an amazing sport and it’s very exciting … and people go wild for it.”
The team next competes Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 15 and 16, at the Colisee in Lewiston. Matches are free and open to the public.
