Spain Park High School prevailed at the North Alabama BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) Robotics competition for the third consecutive year at Wallace State Community College last week, earning the 2018 BEST Award.

Good Hope Middle School and Marshall Technical Academy will join Spain Park at the South’s BEST Regional Robotics Championship at Auburn University on Dec. 1-2 after finishing second and third respectively.

All three schools also represented the North Alabama BEST last year in Auburn. 

Good Hope Middle finished second in the BEST Award category in addition to earning top honors in BEST Spirit and Sportsmanship and BEST Mascot. It will be the school’s fifth straight trip to competition in Auburn.

Marshall Technical Academy, located in Guntersville, finished third overall and also won trophies for the Founder’s Award, the Most Robust Machine, the IGUS Top Gun Award, BEST Marketing Presentation and BEST Team Exhibit and Interview.

Cullman Middle School finished third in the BEST game competition and won the BEST T-shirt Design, and Fairview High earned the BEST Robotics Team of Distinction and BEST Pep Band.

Rounding out the 2018 BEST field were Homewood High, Good Hope High School, Cleveland High, Meek High School, Oneonta High School, Homewood Middle School, Cullman Area Technical Academy and Shelby County CTE Center.

BEST Robotics annually brings some of the more talented middle and high school students to the college. Teams have to focus on effectively operating their robots on the game floor amidst the pure energy and enthusiasm demonstrated within the walls at the coliseum. Teams also present marketing plans to a panel of judges prior to the event and set up booths on game day promoting their product.

The BEST game theme this year required competitors to use their robots to retrieve and save pollution from a hostile ocean environment. The robots had to navigate and ride the ocean currents to travel into the different gyres to sample, sort, access and recover pollution types. Teams scored points by having their robots remove, sort and recycle garbage and create reef blocks; install reef blocks on an artificial reef structure; collect data relevant to ocean currents and health of sea turtles and demonstrate robotic flexibility and diversity.

The overall BEST Award won by Spain Park measures all aspects of the event.

For more information about Wallace State, visit wallacestate.edu.