About Our Teams

Meet the Alberton Panther Robotics team! We're a group of dedicated students passionate about tackling real-world challenges through the exciting field of robotics. Our journey has taken us through the dynamic world of the First Tech Challenge (Read: "What is FTC?"), where we built our foundational knowledge of robotics design, engineering principles, and the power of teamwork. Building on that experience, we then dove into the more complex and realistic arena of the SkillsUSA Urban Search and Rescue Robotics (Read: "What is SkillsUSA USAR?") competition. Here, we applied our skills to design and construct an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) robot. This involved navigating a simulated urban landscape, identifying, and safely 'disposing' of simulated ordnance – a demanding project that pushed our problem-solving abilities and engineering ingenuity to new heights. This challenging journey has been incredibly rewarding, fostering significant growth in our technical skills and collaborative spirit. Our latest development is the addition of the FIRST LEGO League (Read: "What is FLL?") Challenge team, and the FIRST Lego League Explore team to our program. These programs are aimed toward students in grades 4-6 for FLL Challenge and grades 2-4 for FLL Explore. The teams will engage in research, problem-solving, coding, and engineering - building and programming a LEGO® Education SPIKETM Prime robot that navigates the missions of a robot game. We're thrilled to share our achievements and our passion for robotics with you! 

The Alberton robotics program was started in 2022 by Nick Ehlers and members of the middle school STEM class at Alberton using a loaner robot from Jack Rumple (now a FIRST Senior Mentor for Montana). Nathan Morris began coaching the team in 2023 and we built our own robot for FIRST Tech Challenge and SkillsUSA Urban Search and Rescue Robotics taking Gold in the middle school division of the Montana State Leadership and Skills Conference. In the 2024/2025 school year, the Alberton Robotics teams really hit their stride. Mr. Morris started a robotics class to teach the principles and concepts necessary for robotics. Patrick Manson joined as a second mentor/coach and helped to teach professionalism and assist with community outreach. We also have now formed two FIRST Tech Challenge teams: Alberton Panther Robotics FTC #22811, and Analysis Paralysis FTC #28530. We're experimenting with custom machined and 3d printed parts of our own original design, and advanced programming routines using Java. For SkillsUSA in 2025, we fielded three USAR robotics teams, once again taking Gold in the middle school division, as well as Bronze in the high school division. The Gold qualified our middle school team to move on to the SkillsUSA Nationals Leadership and Skills Conference in Atlanta, June 23rd - 28th, 2025. While there, Mahlon and Varuna did an awesome job and received the Silver Medal at Nationals!