
Seacoast Collegiate High School brings home four awards from the Emerald Coast Hub’s BEST Robotics Competition. Photos courtesy Seaside Schools, Inc.
Students attending SEASIDE® Schools, Inc. are officially among the “best” of the BEST … again by Zandra Wofgram
A team of middle school students from Seaside Neighborhood School and a team of high school students from Seacoast Collegiate High School ventured to the University of West Florida in Pensacola on Saturday, Oct. 28 to compete for the Emerald Coast Hub in the 11th Annual BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. The theme of this year’s competition was “Saving Sea Turtles by Cleaning up Plastics Polluting the Oceans.” Teams had just over a month to build a robot, documenting the engineering process along the way.
Seaside Neighborhood School earned top honors with 2nd place in the BEST Overall award, and took home four additional awards: 1st place, T-shirt design; 2nd place, Spirit & Sportsmanship: 2nd place, Best Team and 2nd place, Marketing Presentation.
Seacoast Collegiate High School won four awards: 1st place for Team Exhibit, 1st place for Team Interview, 1st place for Marketing Presentation and 2nd place for Engineering Notebook.

Seaside Neighborhood School advanced to the regional championship at South’s BEST Robotics competition at Auburn University in December.
This year, more than 800 students from 29 schools in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties participated, making Emerald Coast BEST Robotics the second largest hub in the Southeast.
Seaside Neighborhood School qualified to advance to the regional championship at South’s BEST Robotics competition at Auburn University, Dec. 1-2, where they competed against 52 teams from the Southeast.
Science teacher Courtney Krick, who joined Seaside Neighborhood School in 2012 and has led the BEST program for Seaside Neighborhood School for seven years, was honored with the 2018 Briggs & Stratton Teacher Leadership Award at South’s BEST.