Members of the Oakland Schools Technical Campus – Southwest (OSTC-SW) robotics team are celebrating after being declared the winners of the Oakland County Competitive Robotics Association (OCCRA) county championships Saturday, Nov. 18.

The team consists of 18 students from both Notre Dame Prep and OSTC-SW. This marks the team’s third straight county championship. The two-on-two format used in OCCRA pairs two schools in an alliance to play a sports-like game in which 120-pound OCCRA robots place balls into rolling trash cans and deliver them to dump stations for points.

The finalist at the event was the International Academy East and Rochester Adams High School alliance. Semi-finalists were Pontiac International Academy and Oakland Schools Technical Campus Northeast and Avondale High School and Walled Lake Central High School teams.

OCCRA combines the academic rigors of engineering with the excitement of sports to get large numbers of students enthused about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). High school teams representing 30 different Oakland County high schools had six weeks to design and build robots to play this year’s OCCRA game.

Other awards presented by the judges were:

• International Academy East’s robot was named Beautiful Bot.
• Walled Lake Western High School won the Spirit of the Competition Award.
• Rochester Adams High School won the Technical Excellence Award.
• International Academy Central team received the Strategic Design Award.
• Notre Dame Prep won the Quality Award.