Team 1099 Shows Brookfield Can Contend on International Stage

Brookfield High School (BHS) school-to-career counselor Sue Troupe said that over the last nine years the school’s robotics program has become one of the best in its region and among the best in the world.

The 1099 Disco Techs captured the Boston regional title this year, competing against teams from eight states and two foreign countries and then placed 32nd out of 88 teams in the Galileo Division at the recent World Championships in St. Louis, Mo.

Troupe has headed the program since its inception at BHS, and was assisted this year by math teacher Donna Didsbury, technical education instructor Rob Zapor of technical education and mentor Scott Zucca.

“We figure that we were in the top 100 teams in the world,” Troupe said of their analysis of the four divisions at the World Championships.

She told the Board of Education (BOE) at its May 4 meeting that that the Disco Techs had 33 members this year, who met for six weeks on Monday through Friday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and on Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., to program and assemble the robot before it was shipped to the competitions.

In an interview, Troupe said that 19 of them went to the regional competition, which BHS won for the second time in the last three years and that 17 students and 17 adult chaperones attended the world championships.

“Trying to find the money is always a challenge,” she said regarding the program and travel expenses associated with robotics.

Troupe said it costs $20,000 to get through the regional competition.

She said Photronics, G.E. Capitol, Goodrich, PTC and the Brookfield Lions Club were among the major sponsors this year.

Troupe said the program had to raise another $45,000 for the world championships, where the costs were about $1,500 per person.

She said the parents of the team members paid a large share of those expenses and that they had to raise an additional $5,000 in fees almost overnight from some of the sponsors for the competition, which included teams from as far away as Israel and Australia.

Superintendent Anthony Bivona thanked the parents of the robotics team members for their efforts over the recent months.

Troupe said the students have to think “out of the box as they do the problem solving” in programming the robot.

“It’s a great confidence builder,” Troupe said, noting that alumni of the program have gone on to attend such schools as Yale, Carnegie-Mellon, Drexel and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Team captain Theresa DeFreitas describe the experience as being an “inspiration” for her and encouraged incoming freshmen to join the program.

BOE Secretary Jane Miller said that the program is open to all students, not just those that take advanced placement classes.