Danny O'Connor Drives to Win

Danny O’Connor, who is headed to the University of Pennsylvania for engineering in the fall, has been part of SCH’s robotics program since 1st grade. He joined the World Championship FIRST robotics team four years ago, helping the Upper School’s team, #1218, compete against nearly 4,000 teams from around the world. In 2019, O’Connor’s first year on the team, 1218 was a member of the winning alliance, and for the past two years, he has been elected lead driver and a captain by his teammates.

This past year, he was the lead CAD designer, designing and fabricating elegant parts for the team’s competition robot that made its way to FIRST’s World Competition in Houston.

“You can always count on Danny to do what is necessary to get the job done. In fact, if I had to pick a single word to describe Danny it would be ‘persistence,’” says Peter Randall, chair of the Robotics and Engineering Department. “He bulldogs a challenge until it is mastered.”