Morgan Garbett, a sophomore at TMI – The Episcopal School of Texas, led a team of students from three area schools to honors at the Dallas East Regional FIRST FRC Competition, held March 29-30 in the Dallas Convention Center.

As team lead and pit boss of Bronc Botz Team 3481, Garbett led 25 students from Brandeis High School, Garcia Middle School and TMI. She was voted MVP by the team and lead mentor at the competition, which requires teams to build a large-scale robot to perform specific tasks. Team 3481 won the Engineering Inspiration Award, qualifying the members to advance to the FIRST World Championship, to be held April 25-28 in St. Louis, Mo., and was ranked fourth overall out of 41 teams from Texas, surrounding states and Mexico participated in the regional competition.

Each year, the competition’s game challenge is announced in January, after which participants have six weeks to brainstorm, prototype, design, create and program a robot. In this year’s challenge, Rebound Rumble, robots compete to score as many basketballs into hoops as possible during a two-minute, 15-second match.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 and sponsors the FRC ( FIRST Robotics Competition) season of regional and qualifying events for students ages 14-18.