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The Masters team members work on their robot "Badger 3.0" at coach Karine Josien's house in Pleasant Grove on Friday, March 31, 2023.

Sarah Hunt, Daily Herald

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The Masters robot "Badger 3.0" stacks a cone on a pole as part of the FTC's challenge for this season at coach Karine Josien's house in Pleasant Grove on March 31, 2023.

Sarah Hunt, Daily Herald

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A group photo of the Masters robotics team with their first place awards at the Utah FTC State Championships at Southern Utah University on March 11, 2023.

Courtesy Karine Josien

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The Masters' robot "Badger 3.0" competes against a rival machine in the Utah FTC State Championships at Southern Utah University on March 11, 2023.

Courtesy Karine Josien

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The Masters robotics team competes in the Utah FTC State Championships at Southern Utah University on March 11, 2023.

Courtesy Karine Josien

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The Masters direct their robot "Badger 3.0" at coach Karine Josien's house in Pleasant Grove on March 31, 2023.

Sarah Hunt, Daily Herald

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The Masters, an independent youth robotics team from Pleasant Grove that recently won the First Tech Challenge Utah state championship, will compete in the 2023 FTC World Championship in Houston, Texas, this month.

FTC teams are for students in grades 7-12 and can have a maximum of 15 members. Teams do not have to be school-affiliated. FTC competitions test students’ abilities to “design, build, program, and operate robots (as a team) in a head-to-head challenge in an alliance format,” according to the FTC website.

Coach Karine Josien began the team in 2011 after her daughter attended Expand Your Horizons, a STEM conference at Utah Valley University that sparked an interest in robotics. This led her to take a Lego Mindstorms robotics class, which she enjoyed so much that she asked her mom to help her start a FIRST Lego League team. In 2014, Josien’s daughter convinced her that the team had become skilled enough to start competing on the FTC level.

“I love working with them. They’re cool some days,” Josien jokingly said about her team. “You take math and physics in school, but it takes time and it’s very abstract. So it’s fun to see the team learn and understand and actually be able to use those concepts in real life for something fun.”

The team has gone through changes over the years as teammates aged out and their younger siblings and friends took their place. Current team co-captain Caleb Smith and his mother convinced Josien to keep the team going after his older sister’s team got too old.

“I invited my friends to join, and then they invited their friends, and now we have a team that has been together through FLL and FTC for over six years in its current form,” Smith said. “However, Karine has been coaching for over 12 years. I think the dream of Worlds was big for all of us, but I think that was partly fueled by how big it was for her. After 12 years, you develop a passion for the competition, and the team all really wanted to make her proud.”

Each participant has a specific job that contributes to the overall success of the team, whether it’s programming, building the robot, driving it, or marketing their team to sponsors and the public. The team competed in several competitions this season prior to the state finals, including attending the Colorado state championships to help them prepare for Utah’s event.

This year, the team chose to focus on making their robot as reliable and consistent as possible. This allowed them to do well in all areas of the state competition, earning them both of the main awards, a feat that not very many teams have been able to accomplish.

“There’s two ways to go to Worlds from a state competition, and that is to win the finals robot match or have the best overall team and win what’s called the Inspire Award. We were able to do both. When we won the robot match, at first we were like, ‘No way. This means we’re going to Worlds,'” team member Jacob Sullivan said. “And then to get the Inspire Award … you’ll be nominated for a lot of awards, but you can only win one. So we were noticing all this and we’re like, ‘OK, maybe we’re gonna win.’ And then once we did, it was super crazy, because only about 20 teams out of the couple thousand worldwide have been able to do this.”

Team member Kinsey Sifuentes, who works on marketing and outreach for the Masters, shared the team’s sentiments and reaction to winning the state competition.

“My favorite part of state was just the fulfillment of winning, because we were so close last year. We came in second in the categories that would have got us to worlds. Just to finally get that win was great. Only the drivers are on the floor during the competition so when we won, our team ran down from the stadium seats to meet and hug them. It was really funny because we were all just crying. We were so excited.”

The Masters are not a school team and have to pay their own way to travel to the 2023 FTC World Championship in late April. Anyone who would like to help them get there and reach their goal of $10,000 can donate at https://bit.ly/3G7SzBY.

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