STANDISH — After an impressive season, the Bonny Eagle Robotics Team attended World Championships in Detroit last week and came in sixth overall. 

BERT attracted attention early in the season by coming in first and second in its first two competitions and securing a spot at District Championships in the process.

The team earned the right to compete at World Champsionships by earning points throughout the season. Bonny Eagle was one of three Maine teams that qualified, including The Outliers from Baxter Academy and Northern Force from Falmouth/Gorham High Schools. The competition, held April 24-27, featured 400 teams divided into six divisions of 68 teams each.  

BERT was assigned to the Daly field of play, and each division played two days of qualification matches. The team was seeded 11th going into the quarterfinals, and the third-ranked alliance chose BERT as its first pick. The alliance did well throughout the quarter- and semifinals. 

In the finals, BERT faced a team from New Hampshire and lost its first match but  won the next two. In the end, BERT won first place in the Daly division over 67 other teams. 

According to team mentor Heather Corbeil, “The top alliance from each division competes in the Einstein Round Robin to determine the overall event winner.”

Bonny Eagle came in sixth overall. The event winners were an alliance composed of teams from Michigan and the Netherlands. 

BERT succeeded even with “a skeleton crew,” Corbeil said. Despite some funding from the school district and fundraisers, the team did not have enough money to send everyone on the team to the event. 

“But the team voted to be represented by a smaller group and still compete,” Corbeil said and ended up doing better than BERT had ever done before. 

While the official competition season has concluded, the team plans to compete in various off-season events throughout New England. 

Jane Vaughan can be reached at 780-9103 or at jvaughan@keepmecurrent.com. 

The team competing in Detroit this past weekend.