Fort St. John robotics team heads to Skills Canada national competition

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – A robotics team from Fort St. John will be representing B.C. at the Skills Canada National competition from May 30th to 31st.

Two teams of students from North Peace Secondary School in Fort St. John competed in the regional robotics competition in Dawson Creek and the provincial competition in Abbotsford, earning first and second place in both competitions.

Lucas Benko and Bradley Crawford, the grade 12 team, won second place at the provincial competition. Josh Conders and Nolan Coté, the eleventh-grade team, won first place and advanced to the national competition in Quebec City, Quebec on May 30th and 31st. 

Teacher Brant Churchill has been taking teams to the Skills Canada competition since founding the NPSS robotics club in 2015. 

“[We’re] hoping to do as well as we have done in the past, maybe better,” Churchill said. 

While Fort St. John students have not always made it through to the national competition, three previous teams of Fort St. John students have represented the province in fifth place since 2015.  

The team competes with two self-built robots, working together to complete a task selected by Skills Canada. The Skills Canada board selects the task annually and themes it around that year’s national competition location. 

The 2024 national competition is being held in Quebec City, Quebec, which led to the announcement of a maple taffy-themed task. 

The competition arena is set up with vertically mounted PVC pipes representing maple trees with dowels the students need to guide the robots in removing, freeing a stream of foam golf balls representing sap. 

“They have to collect [the sap] and deliver it to a boiler, they have some snow piles to move and drop off. They take some of the sap and put it on top of the snow piles,” Churchill explained.  

Teams have four minutes to complete the task in a head-to-head win-or-lose competition. The project remains the same from regional to national, with each competition increasing in difficulty. 

“After every single level, the boys rebuilt their project, adapting and redesigning certain parts of it as they’d spent months building the robots to get ready for this,” Churchill said. 

Teams will also be provided with a kit of parts to build and program a robot in order to complete three automated tasks during the competition.

The teams will compete throughout May 30th and 31st, and results will be available after the round-robin competition is completed. 

“They’ve put a lot of effort in, so any results will be good results,” Churchill said.