Engineering Success

Triumphs that come in twos are a rarity. 

The FIRST Robotics World Championship is the most distinguished high school robotics tournament in the world. Out of a field of 3,300 international robotics teams, around 600 teams qualified and came together for this year’s world tournament at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. At the end of the three-day competition, Collegiate School’s TORCH 5804 was part of the alliance that came in fifth place in the FIRST Robotics World Championship. 

Let the magnitude of the achievement resonate: Collegiate School’s robotics team built a robot that, for the second year in a row, finished with overwhelming distinction among stiff international competitors.   

At the World Championship, teams are split up into eight subdivisions to compete in a series of matches that dictate rankings, and alliances are formed to compete in playoffs. The winner of each subdivision then competes against each other in the Einstein Tournament finals for the title of world champion. Collegiate’s own team, made up of 30 high schoolers, won their subdivision and moved on to the finals.

​Fewer than three percent of the teams in existence today have ever made it to the Einstein Tournament. Fewer than one percent of the teams in existence today have made it to the Einstein Tournament twice. TORCH 5804 now sits among elite company.

In January, when the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) revealed the theme and rules for their 2023 international competition, TORCH 5804 immediately began designing and prototyping their robot, writing code, discussing competition strategy and conducting data research. Over the course of the long, frenzied season, filled with the inevitable technological setbacks, Collegiate’s students have innovated, competed and won as one. 

Energized by a crowd of 20,000 people, the spirit of the FIRST Robotics World Championship is one of collaboration. Students and faculty mentors from around the world are able to gather together to share their love of all things STEAM.

“After making it to the World Finals last year, our team came into this year hungrier than ever with one goal in mind: to get back to the Einstein Field and the World Championship Finals,” says Greg Sesny, Upper School science teacher and a co-faculty leader of the team. “Using the knowledge gained over the past several years and the experience obtained during last year’s run, we put together the best robot in our program’s history, leading us to our back-to-back Newton Subdivision Championship and our second visit to the finals. Less than one percent of all teams that have ever competed have made it to the finals in consecutive years. What an amazing accomplishment.”