SUA’s STEM Team Competes in the BEST Robotics Competition
By Sophia Opaczewski, Clara Aquillo and Caroline Ryden
November 17, 2025
SUA STEM team hyping themselves up for the competition. Photo by Clara Aquillo
TOLEDO, OH — Saint Ursula Academy’s STEM Team competed in the BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) Robotics Competition at Bowling Green State University’s Stroh Center on November 15. BEST Robotics is a national competition which is hosted nationwide in different cities.
SUA’s STEM Team placed a variety of awards ranging from:
Winning the Spirit and Sportsmanship Award.
4th place BEST award, which combines its scores in marketing, the exhibit booth, the robot and its engineering notebook.
3rd Place on booth design.
This is the fourth year the team has competed in the competition.
“I am very proud of this team, we started as a first year and even I didn't know how to put parts together to make the robots,” said Dr. Jennifer Greco, the team’s moderator. “Our first year, we struggled to even get to the robot built and working for the competition and two years later we were in the top four heading to regionals which everyone told me it couldn’t be done.”
“Based on what we started freshman year and the growth we have, not only in our resources but location and team as well,” said Kimiko Floyd, the STEM Team’s student president.
The competition focuses on Robotics, Engineering Notebooks and Project Design. There are additional scoring categories such as Marketing, where teams create a presentation and booth to sell their robot to a group of judges.
The SUA STEM Team competes at Bowling Green State University, which includes teams from Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Teams are informed in September what the theme of the competition is, which includes a kit to build a robot, rules to follow, and tasks for each team’s robot is complete.
For the eight weeks leading up to the competition, SUA’s Team focused on planning, building, testing and refining their robot.
“I think the programs grown a lot and can’t wait to see what happens in the future,” said Dr. Greco.
