LigerBots, North and South’s combined robotics team, had a season with unprecedented success. The team attended the FIRST Robotics Championship (FRC) in Houston, Texas, April 29 to May 2, for the third consecutive year, advancing to the “Super Bowl” of robotics: the Einstein Field.
Every year, the team focuses its efforts on building a new robot to fulfill the yearly game challenge. Students then compete the robot against other schools’ robots in various competitions.
At the FIRST Championship, the approximately 75 teams in attendance split up into eight divisions. The winners of each division competed their robots against each other in the Einstein Field.
“A highlight of Worlds for me was meeting a lot of new people on the other teams and talking about the robots they made, and learning about the robots and how they integrated information in a cool way,” said sophomore Dasha Sarkanich.
This year was LigerBots’s second year progressing to the Einstein Field.
The team was middle-ranked going into the competition. According to senior Shivangi Nadkar, COO of LigerBots, the team set many goals for itself throughout the season, leading to its success at the FIRST Championship.
“Competion-wise, our goal was to keep our streak going with our success which we definitely achieved by getting to the Einstein Field,” said Nadkar.
However, she added, “I think more than that, it was to get more rookies involved in the training, and what is so unique about our team is that all the rookies can just kind of go around and learn. They don’t have to spend multiple years on the team to understand.”
This year, the team did well with rookie involvement, according to Nadkar. During a meeting after the competition season was over, LigerBots members discussed an upcoming goal to continue that trajectory with rookie involvement.
Although the FIRST Championship marked the end of the competition season, the team’s season is not complete yet. According to Nadkar, the team will attend informal off-season competitions over the summer. Nadkar also said that LigerBots hopes to expand team outreach.
“We’ve also been doing lots of outreach events lately, like the Memorial Day Parade. We do around 30 outreach events every year, with most of them being in the pre-season and post-season,” said sophomore Calia Chau.
LigerBots attended the off-season competitions Massachusetts State Championship, Saturday, May 30, and BattleCry, June 6 to June 7, which was a good opportunity for extra practice.
According to Chau, while LigerBots did not win the off-season competitions, the rookies gained “a lot of experience.”
“Since it’s off-season, the scores don’t count towards anything, which gives the students, especially rookies, more to do and more to contribute,” she said.
LigerBots also visited the Massachusetts Senate, Thursday, May 28, to earn a grant for resources and tools to guide them to success in the upcoming years.
“This was my first time going to the Senate, and it was a really cool experience for the team to be officially congratulated there,” Chau said.
