HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - A robotics team made up of students from Huntsville High and Hampton Cove Middle schools last month won first place in the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship.

The team, Monkey Madness, took the top prize as part of a three-team alliance, with teams from Columbus, Ohio, and Lakeville, Minn., according to a news release from FIRST.

FIRST stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." FIRST provides students from across the globe three challenge divisions: the FIRST Lego League, the FIRST Tech Challenge and the FIRST Robotics Competition.

This year, about 650 teams from 37 countries competed in the three levels of FIRST, the news release said.

The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), which the Huntsville team participated in, is a head-to-head competition in which each team designs, builds and programs its own robot for the competition. This year's game, called "Ring it Up," had teams attempting to score more points than their opponents by placing plastic rings around pegs on a center rack.

Teams could also earn bonus points for detecting weighted rings and lifting their alliance partners' robots off of the game floor.

Monkey Madness is made up of Huntsville High students Ben Allen, Summer Berthelson, Matthew Castleberry, Sarah Darrow, Daniel Daugherty and Thomas Kozar and Hampton Cove Middle student Sarah Daugherty. Their robot this year is named Chumlee.

This is not Monkey Madness' first time at the FIRST Tech Challenge. Last year, the team and its robot, Richard, took home third place in the challenge.

Crystal Bonvillian can be reached at 256-532-2630 or at cbonvillian@al.com.