The Recharged Robotics team was ranked among the best at the annual First Tech Challenge World Competition this past weekend in St. Louis.

Recharged Green made history by becoming the first-ever Iowa team to compete in the world semifinals round. The group from Pella was ranked 11th overall at the end of the qualifying matches, and had the highest score during those rounds at 300 points. Team Member Elyse Ogbourne tells KNIA/KRLS News that was only 40 points below the world record for this challenge.

The engineering notebook for the robot–written by team member Ben Dykema, was nominated for an award as well.

FIRST Tech Challenge teams are made up of students grades 7-12. They are challenged to design, build, program, and operate robots to compete in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format. During alliance selection for the finals, Recharged Robotics was the 1st pick overall.

The team consists of Ben Dykema, Nick Dykema, Lincoln De Boer, Ben DeReus, Mat Van Donselaar, Nate Lantz, Elyse Ogbourne, and Zech Schrauben.