On April 2-5, we attended the New England District Championship at the Big E in West Springfield, Massachusetts. We competed fiercely and won awards!

Our 2025 robot, Hydra, is a key player in the competition. Hydra had previously gotten us two victories at Week 0, UNH, and finalists at Granite State. We came into this competition feeling really good about our standing and confident we could do well again.

After load-in on Wednesday night, we got right into qualifying matches on Thursday morning. Throughout Thursday and Friday, we competed in 12 qualifying matches in our division, Sosik, winning 8 of them. This left us ranked 9th going into the playoffs on Saturday. This ranking set us up well as a first-pick during alliance selection, so we remained optimistic.

During the lunch hour and at a few points during the competition, food was offered by our team and some other teams for students to enjoy in between matches. Yummy options like lasagna, mac and cheese, salad and fruit gave us sustenance and it was a good opportunity to catch a break from the constant heat of competition and enjoy each others’ company.

On Saturday morning, we went into alliance selection. We were ranked 9th, but we were able to get a spot on the 5th alliance thanks to an invitation from team 195 (CyberKnights). The second pick on our alliance was team 2713 (Red Hawk Robotics). During our first playoff match we went up against alliance 4. Then, alliance 1 in our second. Unfortunately, both matches ended in losses and, as a result, our elimination. This left our team nervous and unsure of whether or not we would qualify for the FIRST Championship.

We are so happy and proud of Coach John S. who won the Woodie Flowers Award. This award is presented to a mentor who demonstrates effective communication in the art and science of engineering and design.

After the final awards ceremony, the teams who qualified for the FIRST Championship were announced. We waited in suspense as the numbers of the qualifying teams were read one by one and eventually, we heard our team number! We qualified, ranking 17th in the New England district!

Everyone cheered and rejoiced at the news! We are super excited to be going to the FIRST Championship in Houston from April 16th – 19th! Stay tuned!