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 2025-2026 FTC season is just the third year the Giggle Pickles have been a team.

In the 2024-2025 season The Giggle Pickles went undefeated in 12 matches, including a best-of-three finals, to the Michigan State champions.
In 2024, lead mentor, Nick Kokotovich, 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.
At the 2025 world championship they finished 14th out of 64 teams in their division with a 7-3 record in qualifying matches. While they did not advance to the playoff rounds, this was a strong showing especially as the only all middle school team competing against high school teams.

On November 8, 2025 The Giggle Pickles won the Royal Oak regional qualifier, offering them a spot to defend their state championship title at the Michgan State-SE championship in Grand Blanc on December 12-14.
The team’s attention between now and December will be on improving its robot with extensive practice, optimization and league meet matches.