ANNOUNCEMENTS
3/30/2023
The Technocats were interviewed today on SuperTalk by Mr. Chuck Ivey at Station 102.1, Southwest Mississippi. This recorded interview can be heard at
https://www.supertalk.fm/stations/southwest-ms-102-1/thursday-open-lines/\
Thank you SuperTalk.
3/21/2023
The Technocats were introduced to the senate at the State Capital today by Senator Jason Barrett. Thanks so much for this honor.
Bogue Chitto Principal Scott Merrell, Senator Jason Barrett, and the Technocats.
3/20/2023
The Technocats attended the First Robotics Competition Regional, the Magnolia Classic, in Laurel on Saturday 3-18. We demonstrated our robot, observed FRC robots in competition, and enjoyed visiting with the teams that compete in the FRC. FIRST rocks.
3/9/2023
WE’RE GOING TO THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP!
The Technocats won an invitation to the Worlds Championships in Houston as the result of our finish in the Mississippi State Championships at Ole Miss last weekend. The Technocats finished as Captain of the Winning Alliance. We are one of the two Mississippi teams that qualified to go to Worlds. We also won the Design Award. We thank our alliance partner, Team 14236 Slight Malfunction, for their help in making advancement possible for us.
After Saturday’s robot competition. Tired but happy!
The Winning Alliance
3/3/2023
We’re at Ole Miss for the State Championship Tournament. We have interviews and robot inspection today. Robot competition is all day tomorrow.
After completion of Friday night’s interview. Tired but proud!
2/11/2023
The Technocats participated at a Laurel Qualifier today. We won the Think award as well as a 2nd place Inspire award. Thank you team 18364, The Bravo Seals, for your alliance during the semi-finals. We will be attending the State Championship on 3/3/23 and 3/4/23.
2/8/2023
We enjoyed a visit from Kylie Rippy, a former Technocat, who is now a student in the Medical Laboratory Technology Program at Co-Lin. We appreciate Kylie for taking time and interest in helping our students understand a little about medical technology. Like many of our past students, she understands the value of FIRST and wants to help continue student and team improvement.
2/6/2023
The Technocats took a short road trip to Co-Lin Community College to learn about the Seawolves underwater robotics program and the automation and control technology program. We were accompanied by our fellow FTC team Slight Malfunction.
Dr. Kevin McKone is Chairperson of the Science Division/Physics Instructor and heads the Seawolf Underwater Robotics Engineering Program. He explained this student-led program to our students and displayed the robots they had designed and built over the past years.
D. Kevin McKone
Ms. Mandy Case, Program Coordinator of Co-Lin’s Automation & Control Technology Program, showed us her facilities and explained how she uses robots in her teaching. A couple of years back, Co-Lin received two automotive assembly robots from Nissan. She demonstrated these robots for our students and discussed the jobs her students are offered after course completion.
Ms. Mandy Case
We thank these instructors for sharing their time and for helping our students learn more about technology education opportunities available just up the road.
1/21/2023
The Technocats participated in the Meridian Qualifier today. We won 1st Place Inspire and were Captains of the Finalist Alliance. Thank you Team 17341, Thunder from West Harrison High School, for your alliance partnership. Most importantly, we earned our Golden Ticket to participate in the State Championship Tournament at Ole Miss in March. Thanks go out to the Lamar School for hosting this tournament. The Technocats will next attend the Laurel Qualifier on 2/11/2023.
1/14/2023
The Technocats hosted the Bogue Chitto Qualifying Tournament at the school gym today. We appreciate the hard work done by the students, parents, former Technocats, and all of our supporters for helping to make this tournament a success. We enjoyed hosting and appreciate all of the teams and FIRST volunteers that participated.
12/05/22
The Technocats did well at the Flowood Qualifier. We won the Think Award and were Captains of the Finalist Alliance. (Thanks to Slight Malfunction for partnering with us.)
On October 1, 2022, the Technocats and Slight Malfunction (FTC Team 14236) hosted a Build It Day at our shop. Also attending was the Envisioneers and "The Man, The Myth, The Legend", Mannie Lowe. We worked together, shared ideas, and enjoyed the company of fellow robotics aficionados. It was a very productive day for all.
09/28/22
Stephen Barlow, Technology Coordinator at Copiah County Schools,visited us in our shop to discuss his job and local computer network educational opportunities. Stephen is a former Technocat that programmed our robot and has mentored several members of our team. We thank him for his continuing help and for his career advice for our students.
09/26/22
We want to thank Mr. Luke Laird, Co-Lin’s Director of Workforce Education, for hosting our team during a tour of their Lineman Training Program. He along with Instructor Mr. Tony Martin provided great information to our young team related to electrical power transmission and maintenance. (The theme for this year’s game, Power Play, is providing energy to power the future.) They have a great program that provides a rewarding, high-paying career path for young students.
Learning about fiber optics.
Lineman Training
09/11/22
Power Play game animation.
09/10/22
The team traveled to Hartfield Academy for the season Kickoff event. It was good to see many of our fellow teams and friends. We look forward to this year’s competition, Power Play.
05/18/22
The Technocats finished the school year with a robot demonstration in the hallway at Bogue Chitto Elementary school.
03/31/22
The Technocats demonstated our robot and presented the FIRST programs to Brookhaven Elementary School today. We were warmly welcomed by about 300 enthusiastic 3rd and 4th grade students. We are very thankful for the BES PTA for hosting us. Our team really enjoyed it.
03/05/22
The Technocats are part of the winning alliance for the Mississippi State Championship. Thanks to Captain Slight Malfunction for selecting us. Our two teams have worked and practiced together like brothers and sisters all season in hopes of arriving at this moment.
03/05/22
Compass Award Video that we submitted to nominate Ms. Cawthorn.
02/28/22
The Technocats are headed to the Mississippi FIRST Tech Challenge Championship to be held at Ole Miss on Friday & Saturday March 4-5. The 18-team field is loaded with good robotics teams. Wish us LUCK!
02/06/22
The Technocats competed in the 15-team Southern League Tournament this past week wrapping up with robot competition on Saturday. We had a successful week. Based on our team building, interviews, documentation, and robot design, build, and play, we won First Place Inspire - an outstanding achievement which represents first place in FTC robotics.
We finished in third place in the qualification rounds of robot play on Saturday. We were picked as an alliance partner for elimination play by the highest placed team in the qualification rounds, Slight Malfunction. Together, our alliance placed first overall in robot play.
Both teams thus qualified for the Mississippi Championships to be held in March. Congratulations to both of these local teams.
The winning alliance, team captain Slight Malfunction and alliance partner the Technocats. MC Nathan Rodgers also shown.
The Technocats holding their trophies as well as the coveted Golden Ticket, an invitation to the Mississippi Championships in March.
02/02/22
The Technocats just finished our meet season. We finished in fourth place in our 15-team league. We will be participating in our league tournament 02/03—02/05 in Biloxi. We will be vying for one of the seven spots available for the Mississippi Championships.
During the past weekend’s meet at the Bogue Chitto gym, the Technocats, along with our alliance partner (Slight Malfunction), briefly held the state high score. This is a very nice accomplishment for our young team.
Stood for two rounds before broken.
01/24/22
The Technocats will host a morning and an afternoon meet at the Bogue Chitto gym on Saturday 01/29. These will be the last meets of the season for the Southern League. Afterwards, it is tournament time. Due to Covid precautions, attendance will be limited to teams and volunteers.
11/01/21
We were scheduled to hold a meet at the school on Saturday 11-6. However instead, we will host a scrimmage/workday on Saturday at our shop.
09/18/21
Today was our season Kickoff. We met at Hartfield Academy in Flowood for the Freight Frenzy game reveal. (Thanks Team Odyssey for a great job of hosting.) You can see the game animation below.
Game reveal
Our team less Breanna who is still recovering.
Freight Frenzy game animation.
9/06/21
Update on fundraising. We sold 475 Chick-fil-A sandwich boxes to help offset Breanna’s medical expenses. Breanna is a returning senior badly injured in a vehicle accident over the summer. GOOD LUCK in your recovery Breanna.
4/23/21
We participated in the FTC Mississippi Championships last week. Overall, we finished 7th in points while winning the Design Award. This is what the judges had to say about this award.
“These heavyweight champions clawed their way to their goal. Their persistence met resistance but they were never chicken. They scratched their way to the top and their robot design made the judges purr with delight, the winner of the Design Award is Team #6273 - the Technocats from Bogue Chitto, MS.”
Here is our 2020-2021 team and their Design Award.
And here are our three graduating seniors. They will be missed.
4/08/21
This is our final week before the State FIRST Competition. We have been working very hard to make sure we get everything done before the matches. The competition occurs the week of the 12th through the 18th. We will be running our matches on the 17th to make sure we have time to submit our notebook and videos before the cutoff date. We have been doing interviews with engineers to help us prepare for the official interviews. We have been working on our final touches for the robot and notebook. The 17th is coming quickly, and we are quite excited for the match!
04/01/21
Today we spoke with Charles Wiggins, a Technical Director in Washington DC. Charles works for the Army Corps of Engineers. He and his company work on robots to do jobs that are dangerous for humans, like inspecting bridges and flying robots along the coast to see the condition of various structures after hurricanes. He also goes out in survey boats to measure water depth to make sure the waters are safe for boats. He has been working on autonomous programs for these survey boats, and compared that to our robot’s autonomous program. Charles grew up in Mississippi and lived in Brookhaven until 2 years ago. He went to Mississippi State to get a Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering, then went to Southern Miss for his Bachelors in Hydrographic Surveying. Wiggins told us he felt that God was leading him to this career path and he moved to Washington DC. He told us that he hopes to get us in contact with professional robot-builders and runners that he works with. He told us he was glad to see us in robotics and was happy to see us learning and making a positive difference.
3/30/21
Today we demonstrated how our robot functions to the younger students at our school. We want to get them excited about the team and inform them on what our team does.
3/27/21
Welcome to our new website. We finally published it in spite of Covid related time restraints.
3/25/21
You can see more from us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYYOWWo6L6OhUsJKG-Kr-PQ
3/18/21
During the week of March 8-13, we competed in the Southern League Tournament. We received the 1st place Control Award and 2nd place Inspire Award. We will be advancing to the State Tournament scheduled for the week of April 12-18.
