This weekend, the Huntington County 4-H Robotics Team, Team 1501 T.H.R.U.S.T., competed in St. Louis with over 600 teams from 24 countries for the title of FIRST Robotics World Champion. After advancing to the playing field that ultimately competes for the final championship, and through 125 qualification matches, Team 1501 T.H.R.U.S.T. seeded first in their playing field of Archimedes. They also hold the highest score for Archimedes as well as the fourth highest score in the world.

In the final competition, Team 1501 T.H.R.U.S.T. lost in the quarterfinals by a mere 12 points. However, the team returned home with the Archimedes world sub-division gold medal, and a ranking of number seven out of more than 3,100 worldwide teams!

For many years, several PHD and Yamaha Robotics employees have mentored the team, helping them design, build, and present robots for competitions. PHD donated several cylinders to the organization to help build robots for this year’s competitions, and was a named Bronze Supplier at the World Competition.

Huntington County 4-H Robotics empowers young minds in our community with engineering, business, and leadership knowledge in order to gain scientific and problem-solving skills for use in their future endeavors. Through the 4-H special interest group, students learn how to construct a competitive robot through engineering design and hands-on building. Students also have the opportunity to operate the student-driven team in a business environment following the ideas of FIRST Robotics.