For the first time in school history, four out of the five Marlborough robotics teams have qualified for Regionals. This set a record for the number of Marlborough teams that were successful in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). Among the four teams, Curiosity 11770, a team made up of exclusively juniors and seniors led by captains Riley ’25 and Kailyn ’25, has also made a mark as the first Southern California team to win the Inspire Award three years in a row. This achievement secured them a spot at the FIRST World Champtionship (Worlds) for the third time. On the other hand, Astera 14917, a team made up of sophomores, is set to compete internationally in Mexico at Premiere, a new event designed by the creators of Worlds to give teams additional high-level competition experience in robotics.
Teams can qualify for Regionals in one of two ways: through the robot game or judged awards. The robot game consists of five rounds paired with a random alliance partner to earn points. After this, the top-ranked teams become alliance captains and scout other teams to pick their partners for the elimination rounds. The elimination rounds continue in a tournament-style bracket until one alliance places as winners; they then advance to Regionals.
Another way for teams to advance to Regionals is by winning a judged award, most notably the Inspire Award, which recognizes teams that are strong in both the non-technical and technical aspects of FTC. To be considered for this award, teams must give a five-minute presentation followed by a Q&A session with judges and have interviews in the pit about the team’s processes, season and robot. Teams must also submit a 15-page portfolio that documents their season.
“Southern California has been known to be one of the world’s most competitive regions in the past and it has only gotten more competitive,” Chloe ’26, a member of Curiosity said.
Being on the Robotics team at Marlborough takes a lot of time commitment, and qualifying for Regionals only makes the practices longer. For example, Curiosity meets one to two times a week during class time, has three-hour after school practices Tuesday-Friday, meets once a week during lunch and on some weekends they work for eight hours. Beyond just the scheduled practices, team members stay dedicated and work on robotics remotely. They have access to a platform called Onshape, also known as CAD, where they design renderings of their robots collaboratively on their own time.
This season, although successful, has had its fair share of challenges. With four teams from Marlborough going to Regionals this year rather than the typical one or two teams each year, the teams had a bit of difficulty with distributing materials. The Special Projects in the Academic Research Center (SPARC) was created to make space for many different projects. With so many teams working on their own robots to make them as efficient as possible, sharing tools like the laser and 3D printer is a bit challenging.
“We also lost the 1-1 mentor aspect of it [robotics],” Eloise ’28 said.
While four teams advanced to Regionals, the number of robotics teachers remained the same – alone. Mr Witman, the head of the Robotics and Fabrication Program, had to split his time between mentoring the four teams rather than focusing on just one to two teams. Although Marlborough hired a new assistant coach, Mr. May, to help with the diverted attention away from teams, the robotics members have seen a significant difference from past years.
Team bonding plays a big role in fostering teamwork, and the Robotics team is no stranger to team sleepovers. The teams have sleepovers at the beginning of the school year to kick start their season, and Curiosity continued this tradition by having another sleepover at their captain’s house after winning Regionals and qualifying for Worlds.
“For all of Marlborough, the high achieving awards that the teams won also speaks to dedication and perseverance through challenges, along with creativity to come up with new ideas in an attempt to have a robot stand out or to fix a problem” said Bridget ’27, a sophomore on Astera.
