The Thetford Academy robotics team is gearing up to host its Third Annual Haunted Harvest RECF Robotics tournament on Saturday, November 7th at Thetford Academy.
The event is free and open to the public, with concessions sold throughout the day. We invite the community to come out and cheer on your favorite robot! Feel free to match the vibe of the day and come in costume.
Qualification matches run from around 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by a single-elimination tournament and awards ceremony. Middle school and high school teams from Thetford Academy will battle it out with other teams from across Vermont and New Hampshire. The event is a qualifier for the NH/VT State Championships in February 2026.
The Thetford Academy team 4886 plans to have eight robots and 27 students representing our school on Saturday. Our team includes students from Thetford, Lyme, Strafford, Orange, and Piermont and we are proud to have strong engagement from 12 middle schoolers, setting the foundation for a robust robotics program for future years.
Our first set of competitions were last Saturday, officially kicking off our robotics season. According to Coach Leif, “this week all the roboteurs will be working hard and putting in long hours in an effort to improve our standings against Saturday’s challengers.”
Robotics Education & Competition Foundation (RECF) tasks students to use the Engineering Design Process (EDP) to solve the current season’s game challenge. Students brainstorm, build, test, and modify their robots over the course of a 4-month competition season. RECF also teaches students to advocate for themselves, work in a team environment, improve and develop good communication skills, document their process in engineering design notebooks, and learn that failure is a part of the road to success.
