Piedmont Academy's robotics team finished in ninth place out of 22 teams at Saturday's Georgia BEST Robotics Competition on Oct. 20 at Southern Polytechnic Institute in Marietta.

Representing Piedmont were high school students Austin Bass, Joseph Hardin, P.J. Leonetti, Branson Parish and Noah Quick. Middle school students included J.T. Hardin, Alina Jablonski and Danny Ramsdell.

The theme of the competition was "The Space Elevator."

The robot was able to use a rope to winch itself up a 10-foot piece of metal framing channel to reach out and grab an inverted 2-liter bottle suspended from a magnet to bring the bottle down to ground level and place the inverted bottle into a 30-ounce tumbler.

Adults who assisted the team at various stages of the design, construction and testing of the robot were Dan Ramsdell, Phillip Quick, Charles Jablonski, George Goodman, and Tim Palmer.

The robotics team sponsor is Ralph Hickman who is picture above.