Shon Slatton still struggles to wrap his brain around the fact that his Flower Mound robotics club just won a world championship and will now represent the United States at the FIRST Global Challenge in Athens, Greece.
For the seven students who comprise the newly-crowned “Team USA,” though, it was just another day at the office.
Known affectionately as “i2,” Team 12791 Iterative Intentions swept league, area, and state titles this season under the leadership of Harish Pravin, Aneesh Depa, Manasvi Siddabatula, Shivaali Sharma, Shreyes Suribhotla, Tanish Patel, and Tarun Bhaskar enroute to a dominating worlds performance at the 2024 FIRST Championship on April 20 in Houston. To put Flower Mound’s win into perspective, only 224 of the 7,900 high school robotics clubs worldwide qualified for this event.
Flower Mound outlasted them all while garnering several awards for their robot design and teamwork excellence in the FIRST Tech Challenge, a robotics program within the overall world competition where students cultivate an engineer’s mindset. This includes winning the Inspire Award, cementing their status as the nation’s top-ranked team and the U.S. representative in Greece.
That event, slated for September 26-29, is the Olympics of high school robotics competitions and brings together teenage athletes from over 190 countries. Each team constructs and programs a robot to address a series of tasks themed around a global issue while simultaneously collaborating and competing with other teams in a round-robin-style tournament.
“I’m not so sure they realize they’re on a whole other level,” Slatton said. This is his first year leading the club. “The kids are brilliant, so from that standpoint, I’m not shocked they could accomplish something like this. That said, we were one of 7,900 teams and beat out 13 other Texas teams to become Team USA. It’s amazing when you think about it.”
Harish Pravin, a junior and the team captain, agreed, adding that two-thirds of this year’s team are newcomers. Yet, Flower Mound has now won four straight Inspire Awards leading into the September event.
“FIRST is more than robots. It guides students like us to acquire the necessary skills to become science and technology leaders — preparing us for the world of tomorrow,” said Pravin, who was also honored at the world championships with the Dean’s List award alongside nine other students worldwide. “Through gracious professionalism and cooperation, FIRST instills in us how to respect, learn, and help the community. It is incredibly tough to compete at this level. We have consistently qualified for worlds in each of the past three years. But this is the best year we could have hoped for — getting to the topmost position in the world and placing us in The Hall of Fame with 17 other teams from previous years. We are passionate about robotics, benefited significantly from FIRST programs, and work diligently to give back to the community.”
All that’s left now is to win the Robotics Olympics.
Since its inception in 1989, FIRST Global has championed robotics as a sport. The challenge now lies in global recognition, with only three countries currently acknowledging it as a sport. Elevating robotics to the status of an official sport provides resources and support and inspires the next generation of innovators and problem-solvers on a global scale.
“This is their Olympics,” Slatton said. “I believe in the FIRST motto: We aren’t using kids to build robots — we are using robots to build kids. We want them to be better leaders in collaboratively solving world problems, and this year’s theme is a sustainable and fair food system. To be at this level is pretty amazing. We are here now, and the kids eagerly look forward to meeting teams from 190 countries.”
