By Julia Bae, Banner Staff

On a cold morning in February, members of Winsor’s Robotics Club loaded up their van and began the journey to Westwood, MA for a full day of coding, engineering, and competing. They were headed to the Massachusetts State Qualifier—their biggest competition of the year.

Both of Winsor’s robotics teams participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), an annual and global competition. Each year, FTC announces a new game  with unique rules and ways of scoring. The 2024-25 game is Into the Deep, and robots score points by hanging blocks on rungs, placing objects into bins, and moving around the game field.

The club operates within three subteams—building, coding, and business—to cover the wide variety of tasks from 3D printing parts to programming sensors to obtaining sponsors. The club also has two FTC teams, due to their high number of members; they build and compete with two robots of different designs. Despite these divisions, though, the club is incredibly collaborative.

At the FTC Qualifier, both of Winsor’s teams began with a judging presentation, where they gave a short presentation and answered questions about their team and robot. Following judging was time for safety inspections and scouting, where team members talked with other competing teams to learn about their mechanisms and strategies. The rest of the morning and early afternoon was devoted to qualifying matches—each team played five times—and depending on the qualifying standings, the top six teams advanced to the elimination rounds. One of Winsor’s teams, the #13620 Winsor Wildbots, placed fourth and advanced to the eliminations rounds! At the end of the event, the #20409 Winsor Wirecats were excited to be named finalists for the Innovate Award, for their creative use of a scissor lift in their design. Unfortunately, neither of Winsor’s teams qualified for States, but everyone competed extremely well, making remarkable improvements since the start of the season. 

The qualifier was still a resolute success, as the robotics club emphasized collaboration, problem-solving, and outreach beyond the competitions. As Amber Renthal ’25, co-head of Robotics Club, stated, “We want to use robotics to inspire younger students at our school and across the Boston STEM community.”