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Citrus Circuits notched yet another victory last weekend — taking first place, along with two alliance partners, at the Sacramento Regional FIRST Robotics competition held in the UC Davis ARC Pavilion.

In addition to winning the competition, the Davis high school robotics team also took home two prestigious awards: The team received the Industrial Design Award sponsored by General Motors, and Citrus Circuits member Katie Stachowicz received the FIRST Dean’s List Finalist Award.

The team — comprised of students from Davis High School, Da Vinci Charter Academy and Harper, Holmes and Emerson junior high schools — also won the Central Valley Regional competition earlier this month, ensuring yet another trip to the FIRST Robotics world championships in April — a championship the team won in 2015.

At that competition held in Fresno, the team won the chairman’s award for outstanding outreach and education programs that spread STEM in the community, marking the second straight year Citrus Circuits took home the chairman’s award.

Citrus Circuits was recognized this year for numerous outreach programs in Davis, including Davis Youth Robotics, a Farmers Market booth, elementary school robotics classes, summer RoboCamps and even a Shelter Finder app used to help find beds for homeless individuals.

Citrus Circuits also participates in Compass Alliance, a group of robotics teams from around the world that help support younger teams, and provides assistance to other teams during competitions via the Citrus Service program.

The team does all of this while consistently winning on the field as well.

Katie Stachowicz, winner of the FIRST Robotics Dean’s List Finalist Award at last weekend’s regional competition in the UC Davis ARC Pavilion, receives a round of high-fives. Courtesy photo

Last year the team placed third at the world championships — a competition featuring more than 400 high school teams from all over the world. The year before, the team came within a match of winning its second world title in three years.

Next month the team makes its ninth straight trip to the world championships in Houston.

This year’s FIRST Robotics game is “DESTINATION: DEEP SPACE Presented By Boeing.”

Teams from all over the world built robots over the course of six weeks in January and February to play the game. Citrus Circuits team members built their robot in the expansive robotics classrooms at Davis High School before hitting the road earlier this month for the first of what will be several competitions held prior to the world championships.

At each competition, teams play in alliances of three, operating their robots on a large field in an effort to earn the most points.

For the first 15 seconds of each match, shutters are lowered to prevent student drivers from seeing the field. During this period, each team can choose to either use an autonomous routine or manually drive the robot using a vision system. After those first 15 seconds, drivers take control of their robots.

Teams load cargo (rubber playground balls) into two rockets and a cargo ship while placing hatch panels (flat disks) on both rockets to earn points. At the end of the game, robots attempt to climb a series of raised platforms to earn extra points.

During the Fresno competition earlier this month, Citrus Circuits became the first team in the world to perform a successful “buddy climb,” lifting two other robots onto the raised platform during the final seconds of the match. The team duplicated that feat in Davis, and for doing so, received the Industrial Design Award.

Meanwhile, the winning alliance at UC Davis — Citrus Circuits, MadTown Robotics from Madera and Wolfpack Robotics of Elk Grove — also set a world-high score without penalties of 120 points in the quarterfinals of the playoffs.

And if the team recognitions weren’t enough, Stachowicz was one of two students selected from the hundreds participating in the UC Davis competition to receive the Dean’s List Finalist Award for outstanding leadership, dedication and accomplishment.

Stachowicz serves as the team’s business and media leader. Citrus Circuits is captained by Janet Liu with Sam Sands serving as vice captain.

All team members are all in grades 9-12 and are mentored by a team of former members, parents and other community members, with Davis High math teacher Steve Harvey serving as head coach (as he has for all 15 years of the team’s existence).

Major sponsors include the Davis Joint Unified School District, UC Davis, Technip FMC Schilling Robotics, Hill Engineering and Lockheed Martin. For more information about the team and its history, visit www.citruscircuits.org.

The team heads to Houston next month for the world championships, which will be held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston April 17-20.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy.

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