News

Students from eight high schools across the Cayman Islands came together for an intense afternoon of competition at the 2025 FIRST Tech Challenge interschool robotics tournament presented by Minds Inspired, while the top two junior teams shared the stage with the senior teams for the first time.

The event held at the Camana Bay Arts and Recreation Centre on 22 February provided the opportunity for students to showcase their STEM (science, technology, education and mathematics) education while competing for the top prize and spots on the national robotics team.

Students, with the support of their teachers, were encouraged to think like engineers to design, build and programme robots to perform tasks as they competed in an alliance format against other teams.

In the end, the Cayman Prep and High School and Grace Christian Academy alliance emerged as the winners with John Gray High School (Technology Team and Science Team) as a finalist.

Cayman Prep and High School were also adjudged as the winners of the Innovation and Engineering Design Award. The John Gray High School Science Team were presented with the Judge’s Award, while their schoolmates from the Technology Team took home the Inspire Award. Triple C School won the Team Spirit Award. Meanwhile, Emily Ch’Ng of Cayman Prep and High School was presented with the Logistics Management and Sustainability Award.

Glenda McTaggart, Dart’s senior manager of education programmes, who oversees Minds Inspired initiatives, was full of praise for the teachers and their students.

“STEM education is an important aspect of preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s world. To witness the enthusiasm of the students as they collaborated to build their robots then trouble-shoot and problem solve on the day of competition shows their education coming to life and this is what Minds Inspired is all about,” McTaggart said.

Ian Hemmings, a Clifton Hunter High School teacher said preparing for and participating in the robotics competition helped students develop problem solving and teamwork skills.

“Leading up to the competition with a new group of students, they learned to overcome challenges and learned to manage their time to commit to building, testing and practicing with their built robots. The integration of technology and utilising the engineering design process helped hone the skills and focus the building process,” he said.

Grace Christian Academy returned to the competition after a number of years. Student Dezire Tatum was all smiles after the challenges posed to her and her teammates. She left with a spirit of camaraderie and fulfilment. “The experience was really nice. The communication was welcoming, especially when we went with John Gray in the alliance we got into some problems and were missing some parts and they offered to give us some parts and help us with our programming. So, the atmosphere was very warm and welcoming,” she said.

“The problems that we ran into, they were stressful but they had their good times. We actually named our autonomous mode “Sweet and Sour’ because we had some sweet and some sour moments. It was really a fun experience and something new. It was something that I did to step out of my comfort zone and it was a really nice experience,” the Grace Christian Academy student added.

Liam Benson of Cayman Prep and High School and a member of the 2024 Cayman Islands National Robotics Team reflected with satisfaction on students’ ability to overcome hurdles they encountered.

“One of the biggest challenges we had this year was communication and what we wanted to do in the game with the design of the robot but we came together in the end and got it all worked out. We spent hours and hours planning and designing it and it all worked out. Hard work pays off,” he said.

The full list of competing schools were Cayman International School, Cayman Prep and High School, Clifton Hunter High School, Grace Christian Academy, John Gray High School, Layman E. Scott Sr. High School, St. Ignatius Catholic School and Triple C School.

Meantime, the top two teams of the Minds Inspired Junior Robotics Programme that was launched in September shared the stage with the senior students. Participating schools were given VEXIQ robotics kits and hosted a fun competition within each school to determine the three-student team that would represent their school at a playoff during the FTC tournament.  

Qualifiers were held between all of the participating schools with CF School and Clifton Hunter High School emerging as the top two teams to vie for the top spot in the final. Winner of the final playoff was CF School, with team members Jackson Shambaugh, Freya Cave and Bodhi Lan Yan Foon coached by Nicole Visagie. The runner-up from Clifton Hunter High School included Wade Drummonds, Justin Bodden and Jayden Richard coached by Gay Gardiner.

Preparation for and participation in the competition was done at no cost to the students and schools thanks to the sponsors: Aureum Re, CUC, Dart, Digicel, Health City Cayman Islands and KPMG.

The members of the Cayman Islands National Robotics Team will be named later.