Local students to compete in national robotics competition

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — A pair of students from a Fort St. John school will compete in a national competition this month.

Josh Coenders and Nolan Cote will represent Team BC in the 2025 National Skills Competition, held from May 28th to 31st in Regina, Saskatchewan and featuring nearly 500 competitors across 60 trades and technology fields.

During their section of the competition, the two will use robots to collect snowballs to shoot at their opponents’ snow forts and snowmen while protecting their own. 

The two had been friends since meeting at the Freedom Thinkers Education private school in Baldonnel but reconnected in their robotics class at North Peace Secondary School (NPSS).

Coenders and Cote will go to the finals after recently winning the gold medal in robotics at the 2025 Skills Canada BC provincial competition.

“You honestly know how you’ll do just by how your robots are functioning beforehand, so this year’s provincials, we were running pretty good prior to it, so we are expecting a pretty good result here as well,” said Cote. 

Coenders described how challenging the competition can be while also expressing the creativity it allows. 

“The competitions are stressful, like leading up to and doing it, but it is a lot of fun, it’s so rewarding,” said Coenders. 

“It’s like a form of creativity, being able to build machines and code them, and start from scratch and come out with this working machine, just because we work so well together, it’s like a passion for both of us.”

The pair are bringing three robots to the competition, the first of which is a central automated robot designed to run in the middle of the snow-fight arena.

Cote described the second robot as a four-wheel drive, hopper-fed flywheel launcher able to launch light items, like snowballs. 

“It will spin up a set of wheels at the front via gear ratio to about 5,000 rpm,” said Cote. 

The pair’s third robot is a block-stacking robot, which they are working hard to rebuild and improve to make it faster before the competition.

“This new robot has what’s called a double reverse four-bar, the benefits of it are that it folds into itself so it’s really small when it’s collapsed, but then when it extends, it can go really tall, and it keeps all of your services level,” said Coenders.

“ [You] need to be a good operator to be able to work it … [The upgrades will] eliminate tons of human error [in its operation] and be way quicker.”

Coender said they has six days to get the upgrades done.” 

Brant Churchill, the team’s NPSS teacher responsible for getting them to the competitions, credited Coenders and Cote with their work ethic and mature attitude.  

“They’re very focused and very driven to do the best they can,” said Churchill. 

“They approached it in a really professional manner, which is what I really appreciate about these guys.”