Almost every spring day after school, Room 289 fills with chatter, clangs and beeps. Often overlooked among other competition teams, the Warbots have been participating in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics program as Team 620 for 25 years. They’ve been to Worlds four times, two of which were in the last four years.
Each team is guaranteed two local competitions where they can qualify for Districts. Qualification for Worlds is based on doing well at Districts. But before any of that, they need to build a robot. FIRST released the specifics of this year’s competition in early January, at which point Build Season began. Students divide into seven subteams–electronics, programming, design, fabrication, business, drive and strategy–in which they work to create a robot that fits all of the requirements of the competition.
“This year, there are around four to five hundred of these yellow balls around the field, and the robot is supposed to go pick those up and shoot them into a center hub for their alliance,” the Head of Electronics, Ishaan Pandya (’27) said. “Though, in other years, it [can] be a lot more pick-and-place. Last year we had to basically grab these two, like, 12-inch PVC pipes and place them on a center structure. It keeps alternating from a pick-and-place game to a shooting-style game.”
The team had some difficulties at the beginning of the season due to the loss of almost a full week to snow days, leading to the team having some mechanical issues with their robot.
“We’re not bad, but we also have a lot of competition,” the Design Captain, Rodrigo Vargas Soliz (’26) said. “The good thing is we have plenty of room for improvement.”
The first competition took place in Alexandria, where the Warbots finished in 18th place within the local competition and 52nd among everyone in the district.
“We didn’t perform as well as we hoped, and we didn’t end in a great spot – I believe we’re 52nd out of 118 in our district,” Pandya said following the competition. “[Which] sounds impressive, but it doesn’t put us in the great spot to qualify for Districts. We have another competition this weekend, and we seem to be in a much better spot. We’re scoring much higher, our robot is more consistent and we will perform better, hopefully.”
The second competition, hosted in Chesapeake, was the final chance to qualify for Districts, and the Warbots needed to perform well and impress the judges. However, their score wasn’t as high as expected due to mechanical errors.
“We had very little time in pit sometimes to actually repair the robot,” Logan Beam (’27) said “At times [it] was held together by zip ties and duct tape.”
However, part of the competition is also creating a judge binder, which shows progress throughout the year and how the team handles meetings and organizes the team. The binder is created by the Business Captain, Julia Blinde (’27). As a result, the judges awarded the Warbots the Sustainability Award, which rewards teams that do community outreach and effective recruiting, while training and including new members.
“[The sustainability award] was eventually what carried us over the threshold and made us qualify for Districts,” Beam said. “Had we not won that award, we wouldn’t have qualified.”
The third competition was Districts, hosted in Petersburg, the beginning of which included some technical difficulties.
“We had a little problem with the robot not getting commands before the competition, but we managed to sort it out before the first match,” Vargas Soliz said.
The fix was able to get the team to end in 43rd place, but it wasn’t enough to qualify them for Worlds.
“Overall we faced a lot of challenges, and while we didn’t make it to Worlds, we finished seven ranks higher than we were projected to,” Beam said.
