The Bachman Report Montco 360 Teams sweep the podium

Pottstown middle and high school robotics teams competed in the DANA corporation African-American Resource Group BotBall Challenge hosted at the Pottstown campus of Montgomery County Community College. Our middle school Montco 360 teams swept the challenge by capturing all three top places and will be headed to Ohio for the national competition.  Mr. Andy Bachman, teacher and coach of the teams provides a full report on the days, outstanding accomplishments and provides us with lots of reasons to say, proud to be from Pottstown. 

Montco 360 Dana’s AARG BotBall Challenge

This year’s theme, Botguy’s Bytes: RoboKitchen Relief, addresses a challenge that resonates deeply in today’s world—providing food and beverages to communities affected by natural disasters and to the emergency workers supporting them. It’s a meaningful task for Botguy and a powerful opportunity for Botball teams to innovate and make an impact. 

The robots must: Assemble Food Trays with hamburgers, hot dogs, and tacos. Process Ingredients like pickles, tomatoes, and potatoes. Fry Potatoes into hot, crispy French fries. Fill Cups with ice and serve refreshing soda or water. Every second counts as the team balances speed, precision, and teamwork to ensure every tray reaches its destination. Success means more than just winning the game—it means feeding those who need it most. 

During the process of this challenge, the students assembled the game board, decided which tasks to complete in 2 minutes, designed and built 2 robots, then learned fundamentals of C language to code the robots to meet those tasks.

The 8 teams competing in the local competition include:

• Harriton High School (1 team)

• Lower Merion High School (2 teams)

• Bala Cynwyd Middle School (1 team)

• Pottstown Middle School - Montco 360 (3 teams)

The Montco 360 teams swept the podium with the top 3 places: a tie for first place and second place.

The top two teams will use the next several days to tweak their bots and code before they travel to DANA World Headquarters (WHQ) in Maumee, OH to compete against the winners from 7 other DANA’s  plants around the country. 

The top winners at DANA’s AARG National Competition earn a scholarship to attend Purdue University’s Summer Engineering Workshop (SEW).

**Attended a Saturday and Sunday BotBall Seminar in West Chester in February. Their desire to learn and compete definitely gave them an edge.

Extra notes:

The teams were formed by their work cell tables: Green, Blue, Red and worked collaboratively by communicating between the AM and PM groups. They used the white board, notebooks, and a team text group to continually transition the leadership of the project between AM and PM. They only spent 8 hours working as full teams. As a whole, the group supported each other by writing functions and sharing code solutions. 

Final Thought:

“Quantity breeds Quality.”

• For some schools, “Quantity” is lots of money or lots of people.

• For Pottstown, “Quantity” is time, desire, and dedication.