Porter’s Roboticists Compete at State Level

By Annabelle Horst ’26 and Addy McNear ’26 Staff Writers

The newly formed Porter’s robotics team has wowed the Porter’s community, placing 17th out of the 53 teams in the qualifying round at the competition at University of New Haven, and 37th out of 80 teams at the Connecticut High School V5 Robotics Championship on Feb. 23 and 24.

In both competitions, the team competed in several challenges, including building specific parts beforehand, then drove and controlled the robot at the competition, all while against other teams.

At the University of New Haven, Julia Koontz ’25 and Grace Luo ’28 worked together to advance their robot through driving and engineering. They prepared for the competition beforehand by tweaking autonomous codes and reviewing their game-day strategies.

Roboticists

The competition is made up of six matches, with free time in between to fix and improve the robot for the next match. In order to gain points, teams are judged upon their robot’s ability to place as many out of the 48 rings onto a stake efficiently, all while protecting their own rings from being stolen. In the qualifying match, they paired with another team where one worked offensively and the other defensively.

While they faced some challenges with technical difficulties, they won four out of six rounds by placing several rings on two stakes which allowed them to qualify for the championships.

“The most important part is when you have hands-on experience with the robot,” Luo said.

Koontz and Luo competed for two days at the Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport.

“The first day was a little rocky, as we were working in between matches to fix things, but we were able to make things work out,” Koontz said. “On the second day, things were much more smooth sailing and we were able to run things more efficiently.”

While Koontz and Luo will not be attending the worlds event, they said they were grateful for the experience.

“I’m really proud of how far we’ve come with only two people on the team and it being our first year,” Koontz said. “From this point on I think we can reflect on the experience as a very great one and an opportunity to learn from the challenges and grow.”

MLK Community Day Encourages Student Awareness on Civil Rights

By Avery Zappone ’27 and Grace Hu ’27 Staff Writers

On the 20th of January, the Porter’s community came together and observed national Martin Luther King Jr. day in celebration of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), a prominent American civil rights activist.

The day included Head of Diversity Mary Zheng’s speech, a presentation by commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves, and 2 rounds of workshops with the first led by students and the second led by faculty. The first round of these workshops covered the different mediums of activism. Through this wide variety, assistant dean of equity and inclusion Ashley A. Amoabeng hopes of, “helping them [the student body] see that they are capable of creating change even at a young age.”

The community day this year was phenomenal thanks to the months of hard work by the MLK committee starting in early November.

This year’s theme was youth activism.