A championship-winning robotics
team from Ferndale, Michigan.

Who we are

The team competes in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), a division of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), the world’s leading youth-serving nonprofit advancing STEM subjects, founded by inventor Dean Kamen in 1989.

FTC sees over 87,000 students from more than 60 countries, with each team designing, building, and programming a classroom-size robot to do specific tasks.
The 2024-2025 FTC season is just the second year the Giggle Pickles have been a team.

In our only qualifying regional competition of the year, the Giggle Pickles went 4-1 in regulation play before going 3-0 in the playoffs to win the match.
The win got them entry into the Michigan FTC State Championship-SE, held on December 7-8 at Macomb Community College, where the Giggle Pickles had to compete against 71 teams from across southeast Michigan.
The Giggle Pickles went undefeated in 12 matches, including a best-of-three finals, to claim the State title.
Lead mentor, Nick Kokotovich, also won the Compass Award, aka “Mentor of the Year,” in recognition of his outstanding guidance and support of the team and based on a heartfelt video secretly created by the students.

Winning States got the Giggle Pickles its “golden ticket,” an invitation to compete at the FIRST Championship, known colloquially as Worlds.
Worlds takes place in Houston on April 16-19, 2025, where the top FTC teams from around the globe come together in one final showdown of robotics ingenuity and skill.
The team’s attention between now and April will be twofold: improving on its championship-winning robot, and fundraising so that every member of the team and their families can attend Worlds.