This past weekend, the LigerBots finished strongly at Bridgewater State University for their first New England District Qualifier.

After two fierce days of competition and overcoming a series of technical challenges, we not only made it to the playoffs, but our alliance was in the finals! We also won the Engineering Inspiration Award (celebrates outstanding success in advancing respect and appreciation for engineering within a team’s school or organization and community).

The LigerBots are currently 17th in New England out of 175 teams, racking up a total of 53 ranking points at BSU. Our FIRST Impact Award team presented in front of judges, telling them how our robotics team impacts the way students learn new skills. Throughout the whole competition, we had actively working LigerBots members performing various tasks such as presenting, photography, scouting robots’ stats, and repairing any damages inflicted upon the robot.

This is only the beginning. This week, the LigerBots are back in the shop, taking lessons from the competition to make strategic improvements. This will prepare them for the next competition in 2 weeks on March 23rd and 24th.

We’ve had an extraordinary experience this weekend! We hope we can learn valuable lessons and skills from this experience, so that we have an even better performance for upcoming competitions!

Bridgewater State University, here we come! From March 9-10, after multiple weeks of hard work, the LigerBots will show the world how well we’ve built, programmed, and designed our robot. Anyone is free to watch, and you can do so by clicking our link,

On March 2, robot drive practices were held at WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)!

These practices are held to test our robot for any potential flaws before we send the robot out to the competition.

“The robot performed pretty well, we definitely had some issues, but our shooting got more accurate at the end. We made a good amount of progress.” said electrical member Wes H.

On March 7, our team held our last tests for the robot, improving whatever we could to create the best robot possible!

After all our practices and training, the LigerBots are confident to throw our robot in the competition, as we hope we win!

On February 26, T-Shirts for The LigerBots finally arrived!

The theme for our new design this year is music! The design shows our mascot, Thaddeus with a microphone in hand, during his crescendo world tour. All the designs were designed by our students on the graphics team.

As shown on previous year’s t-shirts, we include the names of all our sponsors on the back.

“Despite the strike, we were able to effectively document and order T-shirts, and we are excited to finally distribute them!” said team member Timothy.

After the long process of organizing everyone’s t-shirts, our team is overjoyed to be able to wear our brand new t-shirts for upcoming competitions and events!

Every Friday during build season, parent volunteers bring dinner for our hungry team members. The team is grateful for the parents’  hard work and dedication put into our team dinners.

Our team went to 8th grade night at Newton North on leap day February 29. During this event, we actively tried  to recruit the younger generation to join The LigerBots!

We set up a table with information about the team, and drove around our past year’s robot, to attract the eye of interested 8th graders.  We also had some great conversations with 8th graders and their parents.

“We had lots of fun showcasing our robot to excited kids who were interested in joining The LigerBots next year!” said team member Andrew.

We hope we get many kids interested in joining LigerBots next year!

On February 22, we are two weeks away from our first FIRST Robotics Competition at Bridgewater state.

The robot is going through the final process, before being sent out for practices at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) this Saturday, March 2.

“We made solid progress this week, but we still have much more to do,” said build lead, Liam. 

We attached our shooter mechanism onto our robot. Build team is now focused on the robot’s elevator mechanism.

Team members gather at the end of the meeting to discuss end of build season tasks that need to be done before competition, led by student COO, Charlotte.

“We’re in the final stretch of build season and even though there’s undoubtedly a lot more to do, it’s incredible to see how much progress we’ve made over the past six weeks,” said Charlotte.

We are excited to get our robot in action for our first FIRST robotics competition of the year: the New England District Bridgewater State University Event on March 8 through March 10.

As was broadly reported in the news, Newton teachers went on strike on Friday, January 19, 2024. During the strike, all Newton public school activities were postponed so we could not meet in our workshop at Newton South. Thankfully, we had a strong partnership with WPS Institute, a local non-profit, and they generously offered us space for our student members to continue to gather at their facilities. We set up operations at WPS in a few different spaces, which allowed the many sub-groups, like electrical and engineering, to continue working. Our gatherings at WPS were informal meetings organized by our student leadership with the supervision of interested parents.

After seventeen days of meeting at WPS, the strike ended, allowing students to return to school—and LigerBots to our shop. On Monday, February 5, we packed up our things from WPS and transported them back to South.                          

Despite the setbacks, having a place to work at WPS enabled us to be remarkably productive during our busy build season! We would like to give a huge thank you to WPS for giving us a safe space to congregate and be productive during this period. We finished the robot’s chassis, brought the intake and shooter from prototypes to fully functional mechanisms, and finalized this year’s t-shirts, banners, and booklets.