Kids building their own Lego creations 

On Wednesday, June 18th, 2025, the LigerBots hosted our annual FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Information Night at Newton North High School where parents got informed about the details of FLL. Kids got to engage with a variety of STEAM activities like origami and binary beads. They also got to see a FLL kit and field demonstration and our outreach robot. 

A LigerBots member helps facilitate the origami STEAM activity, which helps kids learn about geometry, shape and structure.   

FLL, is a global STEM program for kids ages 4-14 that introduces them to engineering and robotics through hands-on theme-based learning. FLL is similar to the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), which we are a part of!  

Coach Paul helps a kid load a tennis ball into the outreach bot to get ready for launching 

The LigerBots host the FLL Newton Qualifier every November at Newton North High School. We also often host the FLL Eastern Massachusetts Championship in December, also at Newton North. To encourage parents to start new teams, and compete in the Qualifier, we give an informational presentation at FLL Information Night. Info NightLigerBot members and coaches cover what FLL is, how to start a team and who we are.  We also collected information from people who said they were interested in starting a team because we can provide guidance and help.

LigerBots members, who are leading the Binary Bead STEAM activity, teach kids about binary code (a system of 0’s and 1’s to represent all information).  

Apart from the presentation, we had STEAM activities including the kaleidoscope, legos, origami, the skeleton handprint and binary beads. They also got to see a FLL kit and field demonstration to inspire them to do FLL. Likewise, we had our Outreach robot up and running, driving around and shooting the huge tennis balls.

Kids had a blast catching the flying tennis balls launched from our Outreach bot, with Coach Paul driving

On June 9, 22 Ligerbots participated in the 47th annual Boston Dragon Boat Festival on the Charles River. This year’s team was composed of rowers, a drummer and a steerer who all worked together to drive their 40 foot boat 500 meters down river. As one of three youth teams in the competition, the Newton Liger Youth Team placed 4th in their division with a time of 02:36:80.

This year’s team faced multiple challenges, including a limited practice schedule and a large number of new rowers. Despite this, the team gave a solid performance during the Saturday time trials with an average heat time of 1:07:62. Unlike last year, the weather cooperated, with cool temperatures and rain that held off until the evening.

The Boston Dragon Boat Festival is the oldest in the United States, and this year, 46 teams competed at youth, collegiate and corporate levels. The finalists of this year’s race will travel to Hong Kong to represent the U.S. in the 2025 Hong Kong International Dragon Boat Competition. For the LigerBots, though, it’s all about the excitement of racing and the fun of earning medals.

On June 7-8, 2025, the LigerBots attended BattleCry at WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) in Worcester, MA to compete in Reefscape one more time. BattleCry is one of the largest off-season FIRST Robotics Competition events and we attend it every year. The competition is exciting with colorful lights displayed between matches similar to the lights of the FIRST Championship’s final division.

During the Qualification rounds, we won 4 out of 8 matches. In the Semifinals rounds, we were picked by Alliance 8. Our alliance was Chaos (131), as captain, and Alarm Robotics (2079). We started strong by winning our first playoff match. Unfortunately, we then lost our next match to Alliance 1 – it was a very close and difficult match and at the beginning we had more points than the opposing alliance! We were eliminated when we lost our third match, but again, we played hard.

Since BattleCry is an off-season competition, students who haven’t had the chance to be on the drive team are able to step into these roles for learning and to gain experience.

We are excited to host the second annual FRC Robocon NE! This FIRST FRC conference will take place on October 18th, 2025, so if you’re in an FRC team, you’re invited. To spread awareness about the event, we gave out fliers and Robocon was shown on the big competition screens.

BattleCry was in June just in time for LGBTQ+ Pride Month. Teams at the competition gave out Pride month themed things in the pits, an area where the team does maintenance of the robot and a chance to show team pride and individuality. LigerBot members Liam and Juliana created the LigerBots rainbow pride shirts, which were sold to team members. T-shirt proceeds benefited LGBTQ+ charities. Some of us wore these shirts to BattleCry. Additionally, LGBTQ+ buttons have been created with two designs, one being a rainbow one and another based on the transgender flag, which we gave out during BattleCry.

We had a great time at BattleCry and can’t wait for next year!

On May 31, 2025, we competed at the inaugural Massachusetts State Championship at Merrimack College in North Andover. Although we were faced with some fierce competitors, we were ready for an epic day of matches!

This was not an official season competition, but rather one run by the FIRST NE district. The top 24 teams from Massachusetts gathered on top of the covered ice rink at Merrimack College and competed against each other for the title of Massachusetts State Champion.

During the qualification matches, we competed in 7 of the 28 total matches. It was quite stressful as this meant that we had many 3 match turnarounds, as opposed to our season events where we usually have at least 5 match turnarounds, if not even longer. We had to work harder and more efficiently. Even still, we were able to win 5 of our matches to end ranked in 5th place.

After the qualifying matches and lunch, we went into alliance selection. The 2nd ranked team, our good friends TJ2 (team 88) from Bridgewater, picked us as the 1st pick of their alliance. Together, we picked perSEVERE (team 5962) from Lowell to round out the alliance. Going into the playoffs, we had tough matches approaching us but we were determined to win.

Our alliance fought through the upper bracket, not losing a single match, even to alliance 1, which included the legendary Nutrons (team 125) and our Einstein partners Nashoba Robotics (team 1768)! In the finals, we were unsurprisingly up against alliance 1 again. We were confident we could win again- and we did- twice! This crowned our alliance as the first ever Massachusetts State Champions, earning ourselves our fourth blue banner from this season and a glass trophy!

We were so happy to compete and win this event! We look forward to future competitions in coming seasons and until then, an amazing summer!

Rain can be a setback, but not for the Ligerbots! Starting at 7 am, the weather wasn’t ideal for a Saturday morning. Especially since we were planning to be outside, go for a walk, and showcase our brand-new outreach robot.

As the day progressed, the weather improved to the point that we no longer had to worry about our robot being damaged by the rain.

Every kid who came to see the robot had gotten one of the pins seen at the bottom of the picture.