Congrats to Cedar Trails Exploration Center (CTEC) Team Cerberus for becoming the Kansas City League West Champions for the FIRST Tech Challenge tournament (FTC), hosted at Mill Valley High School on Saturday, Feb. 11. The FTC tournament was the first ever robotics tournament held in the district with 26 local teams competing. The competition includes teams of students stacking scoring cones using the robots they designed, built and coded in a real-world engineering experience.

CTEC Team Cerberus includes seniors from both Mill Valley High School and De Soto High School who meet during their robotics capstone course held at Cedar Trails Exploration Center, Center for Advanced Professional Studies. This is the first time USD 232 has had a Robotics Tech Challenge team, made possible through an Innovative Teaching Grant from the USD 232 Education Foundation.

The team not only took first in the competition, but they also won two engineering awards: the Innovation award, given to the team that best showed innovative approaches to the problem, and the second place Inspire Award, given to the teams that had the best engineering portfolios and professionalism displayed during the tournament.

Team members are seniors Connor Bauer (MVHS), Brant Benson (MVHS), Garrett Cowen (MVHS), Andrew Dodge (MVHS), Sam Lindsey (DHS), Peyton Peterson (DHS), Julie Steeb (DHS), and Isaac Steiner (MVHS). The team is coached by CTEC CAPS Instructor Neil McLeod.

Next up for Team Cerberus is the Regional Championship, for Kansas and Missouri teams, on March 4 in Rolla, Missouri.

Top row, from left: CTEC CAPS Instructor, Neil McLeod; MVHS Senior, Garrett Cowen; MVHS Senior, Issac Steiner; DHS Senior, Sam Lindsey; DHS Senior, Peyton Peterson; MVHS Senior, Brant Benson.

Bottom Row, from left: DHS Senior, Julie Steeb; MVHS Senior, Connor Bauer; MVHS Senior, Andrew Dodge.