February 12, 2025 at 10:36 a.m.

A BRIGHT FUTURE

Blessed Sacrament takes home third place in Future City competition

Katie O'Connor, (back row, l.) director of technology for Blessed Sacrament School, is joined by Nolan Moore, Annabelle Ackah-Miezah, Isabella Dalzell, Jake Atiken, and Nathan Makate, (front row, l.), Kevin George and Davis Koudakpo as they pose with their medals after taking home third place in the regional Future City competition.(Photos provided)

By Emily Benson | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

Blessed Sacrament School is riding high after taking home third place in the 2025 regional Future City competition.

The team of nine students from grades 6-8 brought home the honor after going up against some of the biggest middle schools in the Capital District, including Guilderland, Shaker and Shenendehowa.

“We have a total of 45 kids at our middle school,” said Katie O’Connor, director of technology and mentor for the school’s Future City team. “We were going nuts; it’s such a huge accomplishment.”

Future City is a nationwide engineering and STEM program where students in grades 6 through 8 imagine, research, design and build a model city of the future to compete in a regional competition. Students practice engineering design, project management and how to work as a team to design the best futuristic model.

On Jan. 18, the Capital District hosted its regional competition for 11 participating middle schools — including Blessed Sacrament in Albany and St. Thomas the Apostle School in Delmar — at Shaker High School.

O’Connor introduced Blessed Sacrament to the competition seven years ago and has been mentoring the group since the beginning. The group has always done well — bringing home fifth and fourth-place trophies in past years — but were always just shy of the top three spots.

This year, the group made the cut.

“I’m so proud,” O’Connor said. “It’s not something small.”

“I was really happy. I get to spend my last year here winning in the top three,” said Annabelle Ackah-Miezah, an eighth-grader.

Blessed Sacamnet students show off their medals.

This year, teams were asked to design a floating city and provide two innovative examples of how the floating city works and keeps citizens healthy and safe. Preparations started in September, and teams had four months to plan, write, design and build their future city.

“It’s a huge undertaking,” O’Connor said.

Blessed Sacrament’s city, “Suiiki,” resides off the coast of Tokyo. In the design, electromagnets run along the city floor and in the ocean, which keeps the city afloat. Students designed the model to scale and included a plan for residence housing, commercial spaces like a Starbucks, movie theater and an urgent care, and an industrial area for wastewater treatment, garbage disposal and sewage.

In addition to third place, Blessed Sacrament took home best use of construction materials. “Everything has to be recycled,” O’Connor said. “You can’t just spend a billion dollars; you can only spend $100.”

The Suiiki model uses bamboo skewers, cups, aluminum foil sheets, and fidget toys as some of the materials to display the homes, buildings and transportation.

The Blessed Sacrament Future City team stands around their 2025 model city, "Suiiki."

At the competition, each team must explain their model in a live, seven-minute presentation to a panel of judges, followed by a question period. This is where the program teaches students about more than just engineering, O’Connor said.

“Kids have to learn to look (adults) in the eye, shake their hand, talk to adults, and defend their ideas,” she said. “Because some ideas are crazy and far-fetched, but you’re designing this 100 years in the future; you have to be able to defend how that works. It’s so much more than just engineering; it’s that comradery of a team. It’s getting to work with people you don’t know … and then they have to accomplish a task together.”

After presenting on the floor, the top three schools got to present their model again on the main stage of the school. Blessed Sacrament presented on the main stage this year with Farnsworth Middle School (first) and Shaker Junior High School (second).

“We were freaking out; we were going nuts,” O’Connor said when the announcement was made. “I was crying. We’ve done it for so long in just our little school.”