High school plays host to 24 teams
By: Jake Uitti
MONTGOMERY Three "Monty Madness" champions were crowned at a robotics competition Saturday at Montgomery High School Raider Robotix from North Brunswick High School, Cyber Warriors from Curtis High School in Staten Island, N.Y., and Team Mercury from Hightstown High School.
"In these competitions you never come up with a single winner, and that’s part of the message," said David Kazan, organizer of Monty Madness. "In life, you need others to succeed."
The daylong Monty Madness competition included 34 teams.
The competition kicked off with a speech by Dr. Gregory Olsen, who spoke about his adventures in space travel, as well as the importance of developing a strong interest in science and technology.
The competition incorporated two phases, the first made up of qualifying matches. At the end of the qualifying matches, teams were ranked and the top teams competed in the final rounds.
There were 24 teams in the final rounds, Mr. Kazan said. "The final rounds were intense and exciting," he added enthusiastically.
Mr. Kazan also said there were about 1,200 people who watched the competition throughout the course of the day and about 200 who watched over the Internet via a NASA webcast.
"We had people watching all over the country," he said, adding, "We also had close to 100 volunteers at the competition. A lot of the volunteers came from surrounding towns and from Montgomery, and also many of them were college students who had competed in robotics competitions when they were younger."
In addition to the three champions, three Monty Madness finalists were selected: Sie-H2O-Bots from Watertown High School in Connecticut, Mechanical Maraduers from Bay Shore High School in New York and Team Lionheart from Pope John Regional High School in Sparta.
Several other awards were given out, including Most Gracious Team Award, which went to Cougar Robotics of Montgomery Township.
More information is available at the Monty Madness Web site www.montymadness.org.

