FIRST Robotics Competition · Team 5407 · 2019 – 2022
Four years on a competition robotics team, from safety captain as a freshman to helping run the whole program as a senior. Every season: a brand new game, and about eight weeks to design, build, and program a robot from nothing.
01 — The competition
Eight weeks, a new game, one robot to build.
FRC is a high-intensity engineering challenge. Every year the competition drops a brand new game, and each team gets roughly eight weeks to design, build, and program a robot to play it, starting from a blank sheet.
Matches are three on three. You collaborate with two alliance partners while competing against three opponents chasing the same objectives, which means strategy and reliability matter as much as raw capability. It pushes creativity, teamwork, and engineering skill against a hard deadline, all at the same time. Everything below builds toward my senior-year season in 2022.
02 — Four years on the team
From learning the shop to leading it.
Safety Captain
I came in focused on learning how the team actually worked and what made it succeed. As Safety Captain I made sure everyone followed proper procedures at build meetings and competitions, which gave me a front-row view of every part of the operation while I picked up hands-on experience wherever I could.
Building and driving
I got real driving time at an off-season event, run with the previous year's robot, where we won the competition. I also built parts for the season, including pieces of our shooter. After watching Week 1 as observers, we decided to redesign that shooter mid-season. Then COVID hit, the team was sent home, and the season ended abruptly. I still came away with new skills and a lot of teamwork under pressure.
Rebuilding the foundation
COVID limited our season again, but it gave us room to refocus. Our longtime coach announced his retirement, so we knew a leadership gap was coming. I went deeper: training new members on the CNC, drill press, and other shop tools, getting into CAD, and learning how our electrical systems were wired and what had made past robots work. It taught me how much a team depends on passing knowledge down.
Leading the build
The school found a replacement teacher, but one with little interest in robotics, so with two Drexel interns helping out, a lot of the responsibility fell to me. Between that support and the team's determination, we set out to build a robot that could genuinely compete. We did.
03 — The 2022 robot
Collect, score, and climb.
We built around reliability: score consistently, and still get up the bars at the buzzer.
The 2022 game asked robots to pick up basketball-sized balls, shoot them into a central hoop, and finish the match by climbing a set of monkey bars. We prioritized a design that could collect and score well while still climbing to the second level.
- DriveLarge wheels sized to roll straight over the field's bars, on a heavy chassis that made us hard to push around.
- ScoringA fixed shooting position. We traded adjustability for consistency, so our shots repeated the same way every time.
- ClimbA side-mounted climber that swung out of the way when it was not in use, then deployed to pull us up the bars.
04 — How the season played out
Ranked low, still advanced.
Two events, one big upgrade in between, and a run to districts.
At our first competition we finished 13th of 28 after twelve qualification matches. As captain of the 8th alliance I picked teams 708 and 316, and we took on the top-ranked alliance. We did not win, but we pushed them hard and learned a lot in the process.
Between events we rebuilt the drivetrain and added a quick-release climbing system, which let us climb faster and more reliably. At the second event we ranked 26th of 34, but the 1st alliance picked us anyway. Our defensive driving, big wheels, and heavy chassis made us genuinely hard to score against, and that helped our alliance win the event. Combined with our first showing, the win sent us to the district championship at Lehigh.
05 — Takeaway
There were no problems, only challenges.A mantra from my coach
Four years of FRC taught me that very little is truly impossible with the right team around you. I learned to build under a real deadline, to pass knowledge down so a team can survive turnover, and to step up and lead when the situation asks for it.